Litigation Searches

Litigation searches are done by a defendant as a means to invalidate patents against which the defendant is accused of infringing. Invalidation process may be held either directly in court or by a reexamination process through the relevant patent office (in most cases the USPTO), a procedure which requires somewhat different considerations. In both cases, effective and high quality searches are mandatory. Memphis Technologies has extensive experience working in close cooperation with the customer and its litigation law firm  providing  a diversified range of services including: prior art search, invalidity,  lack-of-enablement, non-infringement and claim construction analysis, according to the customer needs.

“Patents were not created in a vacuum”. This is the underlying theme we follow when we look for a prior art in a litigation process. 
More often than not, the patent writer basically describes an environment that was already discovered or discussed somewhere else.
From the time of the controversial “Improvement in Telegraphy” patent of Abraham Graham Bell (US no. 174,465 filed on February 1876) up to these days, it is the human nature, that people who create real innovation typically do not have the time or the awareness to file the patent in the right time, and people who are more business oriented or

required to write patent for their job, file patent applications and eventually are granted a patent on innovation that is already out there.
Obviously, every patent writer adds something of his own to the patent, and his legal team will usually help him to create claims that are broader than his invention.
There is always a challenge in finding prior art to a patent, but our rich experience shows that in most cases, if one knows the underlying technology and the chronological events that led to the patent writing, it is possible to find relevant material which predates that patent and covers it completely.