Conducting Prior Art Searches

• Author: Donald S. Rimai
• Profession: Recently retired from Eastman Kodak where he worked as a researcher and intellectual property manager in digital printing and adhesion science
• Pages: 131-144

131

Introduction

orough prior art searches are extremely important. Such searches are

valuable, because, among other reasons, than they educate you regarding

how others are addressing similar problems and where the technology is

heading. And yet, those who innovate and drive technology forward are

oen reluctant to conduct prior art searches. ere are many reasons for

this. Reading legal documents such as patents can be a burdensome task,

yet they disclose a lot of very valuable information. Spending time read-

ing such documents may seem counterproductive to advancing techno-

logical research and development, but the knowledge gained from prior art

searches may actually help to guide these advances. Unfortunately, there is

not much that can be done to make this more palatable, other than con-

vincing inventors of its extremely high value.

More pertinent to the present discussion is that inventors oen do

not know how to conduct searches and where to go for help with con-

ducting searches. And then, when they do search the patent literature,

they come out with so many hits that they cannot possibly evaluate

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Conducting Prior Art Searches