State of the art analysis

If you are working on a new invention, you should check the  state of the art and existing patents in good time before investing a lot of time in developing a product. Only by checking a patent register to ensure that your invention has not yet been officially registered , for example , can you reduce the risk of unnecessarily working on a development that already exists.

A prior-art search helps to differentiate your own invention from existing patents and to explain the differences that justify the new patent in the patent application . With a well-founded patent search, you can assess the chances of success of a patent application in advance and at the same time prevent the risk of infringing third-party property rights.

International Patent Classification

patent researchThe International Patent Classification (IPC) is used to structure and categorize patents worldwide in order to facilitate patent searches. The IPC is used by most patent authorities and enables patent research regardless of any language barriers. A patent search tool should also offer the IPC search in order to make the search as efficient as possible for the user.

In order to be informed about innovations and patent applications of the competition and to keep an eye on your own developments, we recommend using a professional database for patent research .

Online Patent Research

online researchFortunately, patent experts can now use the Internet to find patent information and conduct patent research online. The times in which extensive research in index cards had to be carried out are long gone.

But searching for patents on the Internet is also tricky. Sooner or later you will find what you are looking for in a patent search on the Internet, because new inventions are generally published by the patent offices . However, they are usually not published in detail in any other context (for example in specialist journals).

It is therefore problematic to keep track of the large number of global patent applications . In 2014, for example, there were almost 2.7 million patent applications worldwide  .

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