Several attempts to place the United States Patent office "on line" have been made in the past decade. Th resulting systems range from a cd-based patent title search to an indepth database of scanned patents. A text based search system is suggested for general patent searches. This system searches a text database dating back to 1972 for keywords matching those specified by the searcher.
Using the abstract supplied by the inventor, the patent searcher makes a list
of "Key Words" that describe the invention. These "Key Words" are entered
into the search engine and a list of patent numbers and titles is returned.
If the list is too small (<10 patents), the "Key Words" are made broader.
If the list is too large (>100 patents), more "Key Words" are added to
narrow the search.
The resulting list of patents will usually range from 30 to 80 titles that
contain the "Key Words" specified by the searcher.
When choosing "Key Words", what is the difference between an automobile, a land vehicle, a motor car, or a land transport? Since any particular invention may be described in many ways and many different terms can may be used to describe the patent, the "Key Words" may or may not cover the scope of the invention (to no fault of the searcher.)
Since it is impossible
to receive an accurate representation of the desired art using a computer
search, what good is it?
The list of patents usually contains 5 to 10 patents whose titles are similar
or might describe the inventions you are searching for.
-list art units
-find examiners to talk to
![[I&D]](smdbr_top.gif)
Return To Environmental Model Syllabus