navigating the patent maze

In what has to be one of the pithiest, funniest comments written in a dissent of a Federal Circuit case, which decided that a patent disclosing an hourglass-shaped toothbrush was in an analogous field to a patent application for a hair brush, and thus could properly be considered as prior art… Justice Pauline Newman wrote,

A brush for hair has no more relation to a brush for teeth than does hair resemble teeth.

I couldn’t agree more !

Under U.S. patent law,

a person shall be entitled to a patent unless–
the invention was … described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country….

While we all recognize that a printed publication includes journal articles, books, etc., and that speaking at a conference is not a printed publication, what about a poster that is presented at a conference?
(more…)

Searching patent databases is not easy for most people. My own opinion is that most search interfaces are not really ‘user friendly’ for the ordinary mortal — meaning everyone except patent lawyers and professional patent searchers. Stated reasons to search databases are mostly to do with obtaining patents or monitoring competitors. And these are good reasons for companies do do searches.

There are excellent reasons however for scientists to use patent databases even if the scientists aren’t actively involved with patenting. The number one reason is that

patent publications are an excellent source of information about methods and technologies.

For example, most scientific papers provide very skimpy details about procedures, the ‘materials and methods’ used. The ‘how to do it’ is not always present, at least in enough detail to reproduce the experiment. If however the authors have published a patent application, the methodology will be in the patent publication, typically present in excrutiatingly detailed examples.

A second good reason for scientists to search patent databases is

to obtain general information about a technology.

Sometimes companies only publish their research work as patent applications. In such cases, reading only scientific literature will not give a complete picture of a field. But skimming or reading parts of a patent application will fill in these gaps.

In other posts, I will discuss how to find patent publications of interest and how to read a patent.