Before you invest your hard earned money on an invention, it is important to ensure that you are investing safe and hence comes the importance of patent searches. An effective, comprehensive and full patent search can help you determine the business potential of the idea, the associated threats and what remedies you need to take when you encounter such threats. Though, doing patent search is not mandatory but it can be of immense use in future. Viewing its long-term positive consequences companies should undertake a comprehensive and full patent search.

The strategy of patent search may vary based on the goal of the search and efficiency of the searcher still, there are some common tips that can help us make our patent search more effective.

Utilize Semantic Search-With the advancement of time, search is becoming more and more contextual.Search engines and databases and trying to give search results based on the intent of the searcher and not merely keyword. Same is applicable in the domain of patent search because here too we are trying to search something on a database. Semantic searches find relevant patent information based on the intent behind a normal language description. With semantic patent search, we can find out even those obscured data that has used keywords that are not used normally.

Incorporating Metadata- Incorporating meta-data can be another important patent search strategy wherein we collect various other data pertaining to the patent like-

• Classification code
• Backward and forward citations
• Previous owners
• Current owners
• Inventors’ names
• Dates of filing

Analyzing the metadata that accompanies a patent and then searching the patent database with such information can help us get plenty of useful data.

Add Boolean Operators- Patent databases offer plenty of operators (logical, Boolean and wild cards) to find relevant data. Expert users can put together extremely advanced patent searches using Boolean operators, wildcards to capture different spellings and list specific fields in the patent document to make their search more refined.

Text-Clustering for Terminology- Text clustering is just like doing keyword research wherein we create cluster of texts or keywords that may define the concept or theme of the patent. Text clustering may work for an entire set of patents and not just one or two.

Putting it simply, we can say is that patent search is an art that requires search expertise and well-acquaintances with the patent regulatory skills, still there are some common rules those we can implement to make our search more refined.