Prior Art Search

The sources of prior art include patents (foreign and local), professional journals, academic papers, books, and commercial products. Different prior art sources have different values and require different efforts. Patents contain the most technical detail, but can be very specific. Academic papers are in the forefront of innovation but more often tend to lack trivial technical detail which is required for the case.

Books give a nice background to specific arts that can be used for “non literal” equivalent matching. Commercial products can be great prior art, but finding sufficient technical details can be challenging.

The conventional method in prior art searches is by using keywords that narrow the search without eliminating candidate prior art. To be efficiently effective, a prior art searcher must be knowledgeable with the terminology used in the technical field. Other techniques in patent searching include patent cluster analysis using keywords and patent class/subclass, and backward tracing of forward references.

Contrary to the conventional method, Memphis Technologies tackles the issue differently. We start by looking at the relevant technology sources. We use our historical knowledge on pioneering inventors, products, firms and academic work, as well as our deep technical understanding and experience.    We will do “knocking on doors”, if needed, to find often hard-to-get printed material on historical products in various places.