Community Education for Researchers

Resources and Tools

A growing list of resources and tools that you can use during your research. We also recommend visiting the forum to learn from other Researchers.

Background

Below, we cover basic terms to help familiarize our community with the patent space.

What is prior art?

We often refer to this as “patent validity evidence”. Prior art refers to the entire body of publicly available information that can potentially invalidate a patent by showing that its ideas were known by a particular date. It is evidence that can show that an invention described in the claims of a patent existed before a date of interest. Under U.S. law this can be the filing date or the date of invention.

Patent literature versus non patent literature

Patent literature – Documents that are patents.

Non-Patent Literature – Any documents that are not patents. Often used when describing documents that are web site pages, technical journals, textbooks, etc.

What should I look for in my prior art search?

Any information that the public can find through a digitized or paper-based search can count as prior art. Examples include previous patents; news or academic publications; non-digitized documents such as textbooks; or any public document provided to others, including conference or academic papers and business materials. Prior Art is often found in documents tucked away in a file cabinet years ago, or in the back corner of a library.

Dates are important!

The dates associated with a patent for prior art analysis can be complicated, so Article One has made it easy.

For prior art to invalidate a U.S. patent, the information should predate the earliest U.S. filing date by at least one year. This is why on each Study you will find a Latest Date for Prior Art for each patent in a Study. What you need to do is find and submit prior art that precedes this date even if the Latest Date for Prior Art is earlier than the filing date.

Please note: If your reference was published between one year prior to the earliest U.S. filing date and the earliest U.S. filing date, it may still be relevant, so please send it in.

Types of prior art searches

Sometimes there are specifications as to the type of search that Article One Partners is conducting:

Invalidity study –

An Invalidity Study is conducted to find prior art that will serve to invalidate a patent.

If the Prior Art, either by itself or in combination with other Prior Art describes — or in patent terminology "teaches" — the subject patent, and is dated prior to the subject patent's date of invention for U.S. patents, then the Prior Art can be deemed to be invalidating (that is, it is deemed to constitute evidence of patent invalidity) by a court or adjudicative body such as the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

State of Art Study

A State of the Art Study is conducted to see the state of a technology at a particular time to see what exactly is innovative in the field.

For a State of the Art Study, the Reward is guaranteed to be paid to the Researcher(s) who sent in the closest Prior Art according to the specification in the Study.