Usually when you submit a Development
Record (DR) to your patent department, you are often asked
to attach your prior art search report. This means that
a cursory review will be needed to determine that the
proposed idea is novel and non-obvious in light of the
prior art.
Another occasion you need to
conduct a prior art search is before you launch a new product,
which has a new design, uses a new material, or has a new
package, etc. A patent attorney compares the prior art to the
feature of the new product to determine the Freedom-to-Practice
(FTP) or Freedom-to-Market FTM (opinion).
In other circumstances,
you also need to conduct prior art search when you:
- Start a new project.
- Invalidate a competitor's patent
- Collect competitive intelligence information
- Gather technical intelligence information
- Assess infringement opinion.
- Patent database - In a narrow scope, a prior art
search is a search of registered patents in patent offices worldwide,
mostly the patents filed in USPTO, EPO, PCT, and JPO. There
are some patent databases available for such a search (Please refer
to the Patent offices & database links)
- Databases covering other information
in public domain - In a wider scope, a prior art
search has to also cover the search of information from journals,
magazines, newspapers in addition to the registered patents
in patent offices. There are many databases available for
such a search (Please refer to the Patent offices & database
links).
- Internet - Once technical information or
a trade secret is posted on the Internet, it is effectively
part of the public domain.
