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 Automate the evaluation of patent quality
At every phase of the patent process there is a need to evaluate patent quality - throughout the writing of a patent, during patent prosecution, and in patent infringement litigation.
Normally, examining a patent for poorly constructed claims, inconsistencies and errors is an arduous process. To do this well can be mind numbing - so things are often missed that can have a significant impact on the strength of a patent or of a patent infringement lawsuit. Frequently, patents are not thoroughly examined until you are in court, which is not the time to find out there is a problem.
As VP of R&D for a large manufacturing operation, it had been my experience that quality review processes are done poorly or not at all if they are entirely manual. Besides being inefficient and time consuming, manual checks are not where you gain the most value from your people.
By automating a quality process, we saved time, improved consistency, and could perform checks that were impractical if done manually. But most importantly, it freed up our people to perform truly value-added activities.
In designing the Telaric patent examiner, I took these concepts and applied them to evaluating patent quality.
The result is a tool that:
- Identifies poorly constructed claims, inconsistencies and errors - all automatically.
- Performs specific checks that are nearly impossible to do manually.
- Dramatically reduces the time and effort of analyzing patents for quality.
- Ensures consistency of analysis - either by yourself or by your team
- Serves as a quality assurance tool for evaluating the work of your patent team.
- Provides valuable insights into the construction of high-quality patents - due the embedded expertise of some of our nation's top intellectual property experts.
How it works...
The Telaric patent examiner has three primary functions, each invoked by a button in a new tool bar within MS Word:
- "Scan Claim Format" to check claim text for quality issues
- "Scan Claim Text" to identify undefined or poorly defined words or phrases within claims
- "Scan Item Number" to check for errors in figure and item numbering
In each case you start with patent text you have either typed or pasted into the tool. Performing these functions manually on a short patent is tough enough - but on a patent that is long and complex, with many claims, it can be overwhelming.
You can use the Telaric patent examiner to:
- Improve the quality of a new patent in draft form
- Check a patent's quality after changes have been made
- Evaluate the quality of an issued patent
This tool adds value to anyone involved in the patent process - whether you are a patent writer, patent prosecutor or patent litigator.
Checking claim text for quality issues
Claim quality is one of the most critical factors that determine the ultimate value of a patent. It is essential that claims are well worded, logically constructed and error-free.
To check claims for quality issues, you click "Scan Claim Format" and within seconds a table appears at the end of the patent document that provides four categories of information:
- A "claim tree" outlining the numerical hierarchy of independent and dependent claims to allow you to check the logic of the "chain of dependencies"
- Existence of specific words that can result in poorly defined claims (means, or, if, else, whereby, approximate, approximately and substantially) and the number of occurrences of each word.
- Number of words in each independent claim (as well the number of words in the preamble and the body of each independent claim) to allow you to identify excessively long claims
- Existence of a variety of other claim formatting errors (e.g., skipped claim numbers)
Significant problems are highlighted in yellow and less significant problems are highlighted in gray. You can tailor the tool's error reporting thresholds (such as the word count above which a claim is considered excessively long) to meet your own criteria for quality.
Doing these checks manually is extremely laborious and, as a result, frequently not done or done poorly - as evidenced by the terrible results I frequently get when analyzing issued patents in my search for prior art.
The Telaric patent examiner simplifies the process of checking claims for quality issues to save you time and effort in this critically important task.
Identifying undefined words or phrases
A significant problem with many claims is the use of words or phrases that are undefined, under defined or inconsistently defined. This issue can have a major impact on the ultimate defensibility of a patent.
To perform this check of claim text, you just underline the word or phrase in question and click on the "Scan Claim Text" button. The program then, under your control, sequentially jumps to each occurrence of that word or phrase throughout the patent and allows you to select the text surrounding that word or phrase which may provide some definitional support.
A table is then produced listing all the definitional support you identified during the scan. The resulting table can then be used to determine if the selected word or phrase is defined and, if so, whether or not the definitions provided are appropriate, sufficient, clear and consistent. Armed with this information, you can either add a definition to the text if none exists or modify those definitions that are present. For words or phrases where there is a definition published in a publicly available source (e.g., Webster's Dictionary), the tool allows you to annotate that word or phrase with a note that identifies the source.
It is surprising how revealing this analysis can be, and how difficult it is to do it manually. But it is critically important that it is done, and done thoroughly. The Telaric patent examiner automates this process to assure that all words or phrases, whose meaning may be questioned, are defined clearly, sufficiently and consistently.
Checking for errors in figure and item numbering
Patents are filled with numbers that label figures and items. Errors in numbering e.g., the same number for different items, different numbers for the same item, an item number appearing only once in a patent (it should occur at least twice, once during introduction/definition and at least one more time in some description) are frequent and quite difficult to find.
Clicking "Scan Item Number" causes a table to be constructed that provides a count of every figure and item number found in the text. You can scan this table to identify potential problem areas.
Once you identify a potential error with a particular figure or item number, you can tell the program to jump you through the various occurrences of that figure or item number so you can correct whatever problems may exist.
Once again, these are the kinds of errors that are terribly difficult to catch, yet have a substantial effect on the quality of your patents. Today you must find these mistakes the hard way and hope you catch them all. Or you can use our Telaric patent examiner and have everything cleaned up in just a few minutes.
Summary
Patents are enormously complex and expensive to apply for - and have substantial value if drafted well. Therefore, like any product of a business, patents deserve to be put through a solid quality assurance process before being released to ensure they are as strong as possible and able to withstand future scrutiny - potentially saving millions of dollars of unrealized license income or future legal expenses. To take advantage of the unique benefits of software technology, the Telaric patent examiner should be a component of that process.
Note: You must be using Microsoft Word 2000 or newer (Windows version) and Internet Explorer to use the Telaric patent software.
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