prior art search - deutsches patent- und markenamt · furthermore, the documents of the most...

Prior Art Searchon the Internet

PRIOR ART SEARCH 3

The search – information is valuable

A search will help you to check whether your idea for a technical invention is new

and whether or not a patent application or utility model application has been filed

for the invention. You can find out the current state of the art with respect to your

invention.

You seek protection for your technical invention?

Before you apply for a patent or a utility model you should know about prior art

with respect to your invention. Are there any existing IP rights in this field? Is there

a risk that your application might unintentionally infringe an existing patent? Do

you also wish to avoid double developments and double inventions? Then you

should conduct a thorough search. You can perform the search comfortably on the

Internet.

DEPATISnet provides access to the electronic DEPATIS document archive (German

patent information system) of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA).

DEPATISnet allows you to search in all German patent documents since 1877.

Furthermore, the documents of the most important other patent offices and organ-

isations in the world are available to you – over 73,4 million documents with at least

one PDF file, a full text or an abstract and more than 104 million data records in total.

What forms part of the state of the art with regard to a patent?

An invention is new if it does not form part of the state of the art. The state of the

art comprises all knowledge made available to the public by every conceivable

means, anywhere in the world, before filing the application. This includes technical

literature as well as lectures and, in particular, all published patent applications

4 PRIOR ART SEARCH PRIOR ART SEARCH 5

and utility models. The state of the art also includes pre-publications, for example,

conference contributions, articles in scientific journals and presentations at trade

fairs. Any information published by you also forms part of the state of the art. It

is absolutely essential that you as inventor make sure that your invention is kept

secret before filing the application.

Searches – why?

• novelty searches to assess the likelihood of a patent being granted or to save

development costs;

• overview searches

- to gain a broad overview of a technological field

- to collect material for your own development work

- to obtain examples on how to formulate your own patent application

- to assess the added value of appointing a patent attorney;

• monitoring searches to find and watch competitors, cooperation partners, com-

panies for commercial exploitation or licensees for your invention;

• “freedom-to-operate” searches to identify valid IP rights which might be infringed

by your product if placed on the market;

• patent searches to complement the usual literature searches for research projects;

• historical searches, for example, for writing a family or company history, to docu-

ment inventive activity by conducting a name search or to find out the state of

the art at a specific time in the past.

Things you should think about:

Generally, you need to have a lot of experience to perform patent searches. This

brochure aims at giving you a first impression of the complexity of these searches.

Please note: an initial prior art search can give you only a first overview. If the

search result is intended as a basis for important – possibly costly – decisions, you

should consult an expert who can provide professional assistance to you in perfor-

ming your searches. This will help you to avoid incomplete and distorted results.

Where to find support for your patent search?

• patent information centres

• patent information providers

• providers of patent search services

• patent attorneys and lawyers

These service providers carry out prior art searches of a more complex nature or

offer access to external commercial patent databases and other technical databases.

The assisted search and the interactive remote search support service “Info-Lotse”

of the patent information centres can help you with your searches.

Patent attorney and lawyers assist you in interpreting your search results and answer

questions about IP infringement.

Lists of addresses and links are available from our customer services or at

www.dpma.de/english.


Quick guide to the Beginner’s searchof DEPATISnet

1. Choose the search mode “Beginner” on the DEPATISnet-home screen at

https://depatisnet.dpma.de.

2. Enter keywords

In the “Title” search field, you can enter one or several keywords that might occur

in the documents. If you enter more than one keyword, all words are automatically

combined by the “AND” operator.

You can also use wildcards:

? = any number of characters

! = precisely one character

# = one character or no characters

If your search for the title has not been successful, enter the keyword in the field

“Search in full text”. Please use the Expert search to perform searches with several

keywords in this search field. Searching the full text is possible for German (DE),

European (EP) and international (WO) documents. For all other foreign-language

documents, “Search in full text” means that a search is performed only in the title

and, in some cases also, in the abstract.

Hint: Use also synonyms to cover a wide range of different search terms. For example,

search for “Wärmeaustauscher” (heat exchanging device) in addition to “Wärme-

tauscher” (heat exchanger) or for “Druckereierzeugnis” (printing press product) in

addition to “Druckerzeugnis” (print product).

Hint: You can set the number of columns in your result list before conducting your

search. We recommend the following configuration:

Publication number

IPC main class

Search file IPC

Title

Application date


By selecting the fields “Search file IPC” and “IPC main class”, IPC symbols of the

International Patent Classification (IPC) will be displayed in your result list. You can

use these IPC symbols for your subsequent searches. The IPC is a system to classify

technical subjects. Using an IPC symbol makes it easy to find patent documents

that are classified in a standardised way in the databases even if the documents are

in a foreign language. More details about the International Patent Classifikation are

available on page 16.

3. Start search

You will receive a result list:

Read the titles or open the original documents to find out what classes might be

important for you.

4. International Patent Classification

Click on the IPC symbols which you think are suitable. The International Patent

Classification (IPC) opens in a new window. In the IPC index, a definition is shown

next to the IPC symbol. All patent documents of a specific technological field are

organised according to the same IPC symbols.

Hint: Tick the box “DEKLA groups” in the “View options” section and press “Execute”.

In many cases this will return additional subdivisions of a refined classification

assigned by the examiner. This refined classification of the IPC is called DEKLA.

More information on the “DEKLA groups” is available in the DEPATISnet online

help pages.

Alternatively, you can search for kexwords in the IPC by using the menu item „IP

search“..


5. Select an IPC class for the search

If you have identified the relevant class, you can select this class by clicking on the

search icon to the left of the IPC symbol.

The selected class automatically appears in the search field of the Beginner’s search.

Start search by the selected IPC symbol.

Now, the search will find all documents (also foreign-language documents) con-

taining this IPC class.

More than 1,000 results – what to do?

Even if your search has returned more than 1,000 results, only 1,000 hits are dis-

played in the result list. The list shows a random selection of results.

If your search returns more than 1,000 results, please narrow your search. Return to

the Beginner’s search.

Here, you can enter, for example,

• DE in the search field “Publication number” to narrow your search to find only

German publications

and/or

• a date in the search field “Publication date” to limit the search results to a specific

time period, for example, j-2009 (only documents from the year 2009).

You can further refine your search by entering a date range. This only makes sense

if you want to limit the results displayed to under 1,000 results in total:

• q1-2009 (documents from the first quarter of 2009)

• m01-2009 (documents from January 2009)

• kw01-2009 (documents from the first calendar week in 2009)

Note: You can narrow the number of results in the Expert search by combining

longer time periods and additional search terms as well as further options to suit

your needs.

Example: The example below shows a result list which is returned when limiting

the search for IPC symbols to the publication year 2009. The search request was:

“Find all documents containing the IPC symbol F24H/1/18 in all searchable IPC

fields as well as the publication year 2009.”


The function “Replace family members”

Click on “Replace family members” to reduce the number of data records displayed

in your result list: only one family member per patent family will be displayed. See

page 7 for more information on the patent family.

Important: Use this function only if the total number of results returned does not

exceed 1,000.

6. Display results from the list

The result list provides various options to view your search result in detail:

• the bibliographic data in HTML format are displayed by clicking on the link in

the column “Publication number”:

The most important data of the patent document which you wish to view in detail

are displayed in a standardised form.

• the original document as PDF file

• the searchable text as PDF file

bibliographic data original document

7. Display of the bibliographic data


8. Display of the patent publication as original document in PDF format

9. Load full document

If you have loaded the full document, all pages of the original document can be

viewed, printed or saved as file without delay.

Note: You can search for keywords also in the text-based PDF document of German

patent documents published since 12 June 2014.

Useful tips and background information on the patent search

Term of protection of patents and register display:

• As a rule, a patent application is published 18 months after the filing date or the

priority date, as the case may be, and is searchable from that date.

• Granted patents can be renewed by the owner for up to a maximum of 20 years

from the filing date.

• If a patent has been granted for a medicinal product or plant protection prod-

uct, the owner may apply for a supplementary protection certificate to extend

protection for a maximum of a further five years (5.5 for medicinal products for

paediatric use).

• Registered utility models can be maintained for up to a maximum of ten years

from the filing date.

• The DPMAregister database can be consulted for information on the legal status

(procedural status) in Germany of German patent applications, patents and

utility models and European patent documents as well as international PCT

patent applications in respect of which Germany (DE) has been designated as a

contracting state and which were filed after 1988. Click on “Publication number”

to open the “Bibliographic data” screen. Then click the button “register display”

at the bottom right of that page. All procedural / legal status information will be

displayed and you can check whether a patent or utility model is in force, has

lapsed or whether it was cancelled or withdrawn.


• For information on the legal / procedural status of foreign IP rights, which you

have found as documents in DEPATISnet, please consult the patent registers of

the respective patent offices or organisations.

Structure of patent documents

A patent document (publication of the patent application = Offenlegungsschrift,

patent specification, utility model specification) usually consists of the following

elements:

• The abstract outlines the core of the invention.

• The description depicts the state of the art and states the disadvantages of the

former technical solutions and the advantages of the invention shown over the

state of the art. The text describes how the invention works. Concrete technical

embodiments are explained by examples.

• The claims determine the scope of protection – that means which parts of the

invention enjoy legal protection.

• The drawings show the invention and its essential characteristics.

International Patent Classification (IPC)

Almost every patent document in DEPATISnet is classified and in this way assigned

to one or several fields of technology. For this purpose, the International Patent

Classification (IPC) is used. The IPC is mapping the entire technical knowledge in a

hierarchically structured classification. The IPC is used by most patent offices in the

world to classify applications in the respective fields of technology.

Patent family

Patent applications and utility models may be linked in a patent family by a common

priority. When the first patent or utility model application is filed for an invention

at a patent office (usually, at the office of the country in which the applicants have

their residence principal or place of business), the one-year priority period starts

to run. During that priority period, the applicants can file subsequent applications

at other offices without running the risk that their first application will be cited

against them as being detrimental to novelty by those offices.

Example: For a first application in Germany filed on 1 August 2012, later identical

applications may be filed in member states of the Paris Convention (e.g. the United

Kingdom, the USA or the European Patent Office) until 1 August 2013. These appli-

cations will then also be displayed in the result list of a search.

In DEPATISnet you can cancel documents which belong to the same patent family

from the result list. Then, only one document per patent family will be displayed.

If you have not found any relevant documents, there may be two reasons for this:

• The search was too vague.

• There are currently no or only very few publications in this field.

For detailed search options please use the Expert search. Information on the Expert

search is available in the DEPATISnet help pages.

18 PRIOR ART SEARCH

Any questions? Contact us.

We will be pleased to answer your questions and provide detailed information on

prior art searches and further search options.

Phone +49 89 2195-3435

Monday to Thursday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Friday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

E-mail [email protected]

For further information on patent searches and more useful tips please visit our

website at www.dpma.de/english in the section Patents / Patent Information and

Patents / Search and in particular the service pages and help pages of the database.

The German Patent and Trade Mark Office also offers the following services to

users of our databases and electronic services, for which a fee is charged:

• Workshops: https://www.dpma.de/dpma/veranstaltungen/workshops (in Ger-

man)

• The use of DEPATIS in the search room: https://www.dpma.de/english/

services/customer_care_services/search_rooms

The most important databases at a glance:

DEPATISnet https://depatisnet.dpma.de

DPMAregister https://register.dpma.de

Published by

Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt

Zweibrückenstraße 12

80331 München

Phone +49 89 2195-1000

www.dpma.de/english

Last update

April 2018

Picture credit

Fotolia.com: Pavel Timofeev

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