Today, we will learn about intellectual property rights, especially “patent prior art research and patent classification concept”.
1. Patent prior art search
A patent prior art search is an important criterion for preventing patent disputes and judging the grantability of an applied patent.
In Korea, a free search for all intellectual property rights such as Korean patents, utility models, and designs is available at the KIPRIS, an organization under the Korean Intellectual Property Office. To search for a patent, you can access the KIPRIS website and search for a desired patent using the operators (AND, OR, NOT, etc.). For a more detailed search, click Advanced Search, i.e. Search by Item. You can narrow down the scope of patent technology you want to know by using the re-search within the search function after restricting each component of a patent, such as an application number, a publication number, an abstract, and the inventor name.
In addition, KIPRIS publishes various publications, including full disclosure issued at the time of patent application, full disclosure issued following patent examination decision and patent registration, and published booklet consisting of books and scanned images of past patents. Here, the full text of patent registration includes administrative matters such as rights holders, scope of rights, and whether or not annual fees are paid, and etc.. KIPRIS also provides Japanese and US publications with translation services for access.
Gazette is not the only means of information that can be found in KIPRIS. In line with globalization, KIPRIS provides an English abstract for Korean patents, which is called KPA. This English abstract serves to help foreigners as well as Koreans to easily collect information on Korean patents.
KIPRIS also provides a search function for overseas patents, and currently searchable countries include the United States, China, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, and Europe. As each country's patent notation system is different, it also provides appropriate search examples, so the user can properly select a search method according to the examples and conduct a desired patent search.
Lastly, services such as KIPRIS are also available in other overseas countries, and you can search for patent information in each country at IPDL (English and Japanese service) in Japan, USPTO in the United States, and worldwide.espacenet.com in Europe. In particular, in Europe, it is known that the reliability of overseas patent status searches is excellent. Also, a combined search for the database INPADOC is possible and information for patents in China is available in the European system.
2. Patent classification
Patent classification makes it easy to research prior art to accurately identify the technical field of an applied invention. The better a classified technology is the easier the technology is to be classified as a single technology as there are several technical terms that indicate a single concept even if there are no appropriate keywords. Conversely, if there are no appropriate keywords, a lot of noise may occur in the patent classification without a sufficient understanding of the patent details. A keyword search is a concept similar to patent classification search. In keyword search, the applicant who writes a specification decides the keywords based on his/her own special expression style, whereas classification search is classified based on the technical content focusing on the details of the application. It is more useful than keyword research by using a specific code. A characteristic of patent classification is that it has a technical dependency relationship, that is, it has a technical hierarchical structure, and it can be amended, such as annihilation, combination, separation, etc., if necessary.
The selection methods for patent classification include Catchword index (classifying patents using index words and key words), Manual search (directly searching the patent classification manual, using specific keywords), and Statistical Approach (entering two or three keywords and searching for the most to find frequently occurring patent classifications).
Today, we learned about intellectual property rights, especially “patent prior art research and patent classification concept”. Next, we will study intellectual property rights, especially “major patent classifications and invention cases”.
*I am a student learning IP, not an IP expert. Translation is also by Google translator and my own, insufficient English skills. I wanted to deliver the IP related contents in the perspectives of a student. I hope my blog helps people like me.
*The above is what I learned from Professor Moon's intellectual property lecture, which can be viewed through K-mooc. Here is the link to the lecture (you may not be able to view it without logging in).
kmooc.kr/courses/course-v1:YeungnamUnivK+YU21900+2021_01/course
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