[To Do] Automatic Patent centered search

Hi Bruno,

Sometimes I'd like to do a search "centered in a patent" in order to locate the most closed patents around this patent. This could be because I'd like to find patents affecting the novelty and/or inventive steps of this patent (older patents)... or simply because I'd like to find similar patents (older and newer patents).

Apart from the classical IPC/ECLA + keyword search I usually do (manually) the following strategy based on cited&citing patents:

1.- From patent number => To identify all cited&citing patent numbers and to make a first list.

2.- To download the list of all the cited&citing patent numbers (with all their family members). This is the "first circle" around a patent.

3.- From this "first circle" => To identify all cited&citing patent numbers and to make a second list.

4.- To download the list of all the cited&citing patent numbers (with all their family members). They are the "second circle" around a patent.

The second circle is composed by cited+cited, cited+citing, citing+cited, citing+citing patents, so this search FOR SURE contains new patents not obtained through IPC/ECLA + keywords!

This process can be repeated to obtain the third circle, ... etc

I think that it is extremely easy to MP to automate this patent centered search. MP only has to concatenate the disclosed already known processes.

MP could include in the search form a new button "patent centered search" requiring only a patent number in the "patent number" field.

In a further improvement this process could be launched from a list of highlighted patents using the contextual menu.

This process is of high value when there are patents not ok classified etc

What do you think?
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Juan Carlos Vergara

Hi Juan,

I think that is a good idea, but sometimes USPTO database contains for one patent more than 60 cited patents.

I'm afraid if this patent have been found in the first circle because MP could download a lot of patent no ?
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Regards / Cordialement
Bruno Mannina
Technical Support / Support Technique

... yes I agree that
- in case of some companies documenting very well the state of the art
- in case of some technical fields where patents usually cite many previous patents etc

... then the number of "related patents" could be high, but THIS IS THE REASON of the automatisation. Imagine doing this manually!!

Just to prevent rare cases, if you like MP could stop and show how many patents there are in the second circle before obtaining them, so the user can validate this second step.

regards
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Juan Carlos Vergara

Hi Juan,

I put this idea in the ToDoList.

Thank's for this new idea !
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Regards / Cordialement
Bruno Mannina
Technical Support / Support Technique