IP Searching - introduction

Searching is another useful business tool with the potential to save you a considerable amount of money, or to identify otherwise hidden opportunities.
Searching may be performed by your attorney, though you should not neglect the possibility of conducting searching yourself. A wide variety of resources are now available over the internet, allowing a degree of searching previously only obtainable through dedicated searching agencies.

Searching, yourself, in the appropriate context can be useful – as will be identified in the following pages. While you would not ideally wish to perform your own search as part of an opinion on potential infringement, the intimate knowledge of inventors with their specialised subject field often leads them to interesting pieces of knowledge. We have had several inventors who have found solutions to part of their invention they had been struggling with, or found information leading to refinements in their invention.

Whenever searching is undertaken, and regardless of who performs the
search, there is always a degree of uncertainty associated with the accuracy
and completeness of the search. Commercial databases with strict protocols
on how information is entered tend to have a higher accuracy. Public IP databases tend to reasonable accuracies, though occasionally contain errors due to differently trained operators entering information or from plain human error. Delays in information being entered complicate matters, while some databases only go back as far as the mid 1970’s or later. Much IP information is kept confidential for at least 18 months or until acceptance, making subject searching new applications near impossible. Further, many databases are specific – IP databases do not typically contain literature, and vice versa. Many companies also now maintain websites which would not be located from IP or literature specific databases.

Despite such limitations, searching is a very useful and valuable tool providing it is remembered that it is not a 100% accurate representation of all the information that may be available, and such limitations are taken into account when conclusions are drawn from any analysis. The ability to perform inexpensive searching providing useful feedback to a business cannot be overlooked.