Keyword searching is THE most common method for running patent searches, but keyword searches are commonly thought to be incomplete and error prone. However, a five step method to develop robust search strategies can yield a set of search strategies that misses almost nothing in the intellectual property landscape and produces a database that is ideal for strategic technical analysis.

Step 1. Define the question.

The process starts by asking several key questions.

1. What is the problem and why is it important?

2. What scientific or technical papers do you know about?

3. What technology products do you know about?

4. What organizations or inventors do you know of that participate in the area?

Market related keywords come from question 1. Technology keywords come from questions 2 & 3. Process keywords come from “reverse engineering” the products in questions 3 & 4.

Step 2. Expand the initial keyword set and the participating organizations list.

To extend a keyword set, we often

· run searches in Google combining keywords and the word “synonym”

· use the thesaurus in MS Word, visualthesaurus.com or wordpot.com

· scan the titles of the first 100-300 hits of initial patent searches to spot more synonyms or misspellings

Once a broad list of terms has been gathered, we can organize the terms using grammatical structure. Main ideas or main keywords are often nouns or verbs. Adjectives or adverbs are grammatical modifiers and search limiters.

Step 3. Run the keyword strategies.

Step 4. Refine searches and test search strategies.

A search needs to be refined if it is too big or off target. There are four main levers that can be used to help refine a search:

· IPC codes or US patent classes

· limiting the search to titles, abstract and patent claims

· limiting the search to a geographic area such as searching US patents only

· using a Boolean AND to combine main ideas with limiters

Once a search has been run, the validity of a database can be tested by checking to see that it contains the organizations or inventors that should be there. (see Steps 1 & 2).

Step 5. Ready the strategic patent database for use. Multiple, overlapping searches are combined to remove duplicates and the database is ready to answer strategic questions.

Conclusion. Our experience with keyword searching has been very positive. We hope this description inspires you to explore other ways to improve the keyword search experience.

Gary M. Oosta, Ph.D., Sr. VP R&D, Oval Ideas, Inc.

Oval Ideas is a provider of software tools and methods to technologies products based companies, helping them visualize and validate global technology innovation and product strategies in a market context. http://www.ovalideas.com/iptechstrategy.html

…Knowing beats guessing.