How Patent Can be a Useful Source of Prior Art Information?
When you purchase a home, a systematic check to confirm who the actual owner is done to stop awful surprises. Strangely sufficient, this kind of systematic check is not basic practice in the immaterial world. When a company invests a huge amount of money in Research and Development (R&D) activities, it rarely checks if the technology it wants to develop by now exists and if it is it owned by anyone else.
To know what has been made prior to you start R&D work you want to do a so-called prior art search to find all present same developments or inventions. There are many activities carried out under this kind of search such as Patent Invalidity Search. Basically, researchers depend on the classic sources to use this information like scientific publications, contact with peers, conference documentation, the Internet etc. In the procedure, patents are also ignored due to scientists think about patents as a business tool rather than a source of information.
Patents, in any case, not just offer an immense knowledge into existing technologies but, in addition, give fundamental information on who owns a technology and who the significant players are in a specific field.
Patents: a key source of the prior art information
There are numerous reasons why you should efficiently utilize patent databases as a source of technical information:
Patent documents contain information you will not discover somewhere else. Since patent archives must depict inventions so that people skilled in the art can imitate them, these documents will contain definite information you will not discover in classic scientific publications.
Patent documents can be used easily. Today many patent databases are accessible openly on the Internet. Patent workplaces worldwide have concurred on publication standards and the sharing of their publications, bringing about worldwide, all around organized databases. Patent data is additionally classified as per the globally acknowledged plan, subdividing the technical fields into fine sub-domains. Great scientific publications, then again, start from numerous sources and don’t regard production standards as patents do.
Patent information is up-to-date. Most companies lean toward not to unveil their research results for evident competition reasons. Yet, in the event that a company needs to get exclusive rights on its development, it must file a patent application that will, in the long run, be published and made accessible to the general population.
Patents provide with more than technical information. As patent documents can be legitimate titles of proprietorship, they give valuable signs on which organizations hold an innovation, on inventors, on the extent of possession, on the free an availability of a technology when the patent has lapsed, and so forth.
Conclusion
Patent sources must be methodically viewed as when Prior Art Search Service is benefitted. Free patent information tools on the Internet offer a fast overview of what this source of information can provide. People who need to extend their insight into this field or look for expert guidance should best contact the renowned patent search providers so that they get the right information at the right time.