Update on Prior Art Patent Research
This is an update on my previous article entitled, Prior Art Patent Research. In that article, I talked about crowdsourcing and mentioned one organization taking advantage of the power of crowdsourcing who is Article One Partners (AOP). Since then I received a few correspondences from AOP and I learned a great deal about them which I would like to share with you.
The noise of Invention by Vilseskogen, on Flickr. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
My Update on Prior Art Patent Research
From the interactions I had with AOP staff, one thing I can tell you is that they genuinely want their researchers to succeed. If you think about it, it will be obvious why they show support to their researchers with enthusiasm. If you succeed as a researcher such us for example, you won a research study by giving the highest quality prior art, your success will also be the success of AOP. The client of the research study in which you submitted an excellent prior art will be happy and that is good points in favor of AOP in the eyes of their clients. Researchers and AOP have a symbiotic relationship.
Listed below are some of the great tips I received from AOP. They are worded here exactly the same as how I received them (except number 5):
- Use the Patent Claims to identify the best keywords and phrases.
- Think creatively about how the technology is used in different industries.
- NPL is the Best – Non-Patent Literature and non-US patents made up 75% of winning references in 2011
- Think creatively in researching – Researching through online databases, thinking back to past experience with certain technologies, and utilizing library resources can all be great ways to find more unique submissions.
- Have a look at the Article One Blog (see AOP link in Blogroll at left) – it is an excellent resource.
These tips fueled my fire in prior art patent research. I hope it did the same with yours. Happy researching!
