THE WORK WITH ENGLISH PATENT SPECIFICATIONS

Unit 1.

Introductory Lesson

The Peculiarities of Patent Information and Documentation

The development of new modern equipment, machines, structures and different industrial items requires the information of the inventions that have been made all over the world. The technical solution can be defined as "invention" if it has "absolute novelty", "non-obviousness" and "useless effect". These are the main factors of applying a new item as invention though there can be more criteria for example "industrial applicability" or "reliability" in the Patent Laws of some countries.

For the purpose of deciding whether or not an invention is novel, the prior art base is used. The Prior Art can be defined as "everything publicly known before the invention, as shown in earlier patents and other published material". It is a so-called "a barrier to obtaining a patent" because if examination reveals that an invention is not novel, the patent application is rejected.

As a rule a person who created an invention can submit an application to the National Patent Office for the grant of a patent. Besides the National Patent, one can apply for the European Patent which can be granted according to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) or the European Patent Convention (EPC).

According to the definition suggested by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) "a patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. To get a patent, technical information about the invention must be disclosed to the public in a patent application".

Therefore a patent is a juridical document containing the name of an inventor, the title of the invention and some dates concerning the procedure of patenting. In practical work engineer deals with a Patent Specification which contains the detailed description of the invention. A Patent Specification relates to patent documentations and has a legal nature and a legal force as a patent itself.

Very often engineers have to carry out different kinds of the patent searches in their professional activity. The most widely used kinds of searching are an infringement search, a search for analogs or an information search. The appropriate type of searches depends on the purpose of professional activity and particular situations.

As a rule the subject-matter of the inventions can be a device, a method and a substance.

Nowadays there are two subject-matters of the inventions in the Russian Federation, namely they are "product" and "method".

Patent information plays very important role in a creative activity of engineers who develop new types of machinery, military equipment, electronic devices and so on as Patent Specifications contain the results of the recent achievements of technical and scientific researches.

Patent information has a great number of advantages such as a novelty, actuality and operational efficiency. Moreover patent information is considered to be trustworthy data as all the materials of the patent application are thoroughly examined by the specialists in a particular field of art.

In addition Patent Specifications have a clear and definite structure which allows simplifying a search of appropriate patent details. More data concerning the peculiarities of patent information and documentation can be found in the sources cited in References.

Home Task: Check your knowledge of patent information and documentation.

Answer the following questions:

1) What is the definition of "an invention"?

2) What are the main invention criteria?

3) What is the subject-matter of the invention?

4) Explain the difference between "Patent" and "Patent Specification".

5) How can the Prior Art be defined?

6) Give the explanation of "a patent".

7) What is the nature of the patent?

8) What kinds of patent search do you know?

9) Why patent information is useful for engineers?

10) What advantages does the patent data have?