Patent Search Best Practices

Overview

Under pressure to meet shorter deadlines and find cost savings, IP departments are increasingly looking to external specialists to handle their patent search projects quickly and efficiently. But, with so many search firms in the market, how do you know which is the right partner for you?

Whether you're looking to upgrade your search technology or to outsource the entire patent search process, you can navigate the transition in confidence with these practical tips, tricks, tools and helpful resources.

Read on to discover:

Which patent search solution to choose
How to select the right patent search provider
Resources to support your patent search process
6 reasons to work with Questel

Which Patent Search Solution Do You Need?

Outsource Patentability, Freedom-to-operate, or Invalidity Searches
Identify and prioritize prior art patent status prior to filing new patents, identify patents likely to cover specific technological characteristics, or search for state-of-the-art documents to invalidate the main claims of a patent application or granted patent.
Discover our patent search services
Do it Yourself with Cutting-edge Patent Search Software
Companies that prefer to manage patent searches in-house need access to state-of-the-art tools. Our Orbit IP intelligence software is designed to help you accelerate your patent analysis and make informed decisions.
Find out more about Orbit Intelligence

How to Select the Right Patent Search Partner

While tech-driven search providers generate the most thorough and precise patent searches, not all search technology is created equal. We recommend considering these three key questions when selecting a supplier:

1. How easy is it to order searches—are their systems secure, transparent, and collaborative?
2. What types of resources do they have available in terms of databases and people—can they handle volume and deadlines cost-effectively?
3. What types of deliverables do they offer, and how is their use of technology improving their service?

Resources to Support Your Patent Search Process

Read our latest blogs

Patent Search Techniques:
Five High-Level Steps in Search Strategy Building
Patent Invalidity Searching:
A Comprehensive Guide with Orbit Intelligence
Standard Essential Patents:
How to Do a Prior Art Search for SEPs

Read more blogs

6 Reasons to Choose Questel for Patent Search

Drawing on our decades of global patent search, across many languages and technical fields, Questel’s patent search services and specialist search technologies ease the research burden on busy in-house teams and their external law firm advisors. Here are six great reasons to make Questel your patent search partner.

1. Industry-leading data

With a database of over 100 million patents, 17 million designs, and 150 million non-patent literature (including clinical trials, projects, and scientific documents) and frequent updates, Questel’s Orbit Intelligence search software leads the industry in patent data quality and update frequency.

Contact us to find out more about patent search

2. Powerful, flexible, and customizable search technology

Search our extensive databases by families or publications using keywords, classifications, assignees, inventors, countries, UPC opt-outs, representatives, citations, and more. Collaborate and analyze results and set up alerts by technology, assignee, and legal status alerts.

Reasons to choose Questel for patent search 2

3. Continuous development

We are continually investing in new technologies, adding new functionality to our IP Intelligence Software, such as US examiner statistics and EPO families by priority document, including divisionals and continuations.

Patent search and continuous development

4. Artificial intelligence

We have embraced the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) through our secure AI-based tools, including semantic search using AI, machine translations and ChatGPT (find out more about our AI patent classification module AI-Classifier).

5. Data security

Our search processes and software are ISO 27001 certified for data security to ensure the confidentiality of your patent searches.

6. Dedicated support

We believe that it is the combination of our people and our tools that makes a difference to our clients. That’s why the support team on our global helpdesk is reachable by email and phone whenever you need them.

Contact our subject matter experts to discover the right solution for you

Schedule a meeting

To find out more about our patent search solutions, schedule a meeting with one of our subject matter experts today.