WO2017175911A1 - Method for providing invalidity information and server for providing invalidity information - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a method for providing invalidity information relating to a specific patent to a user. In particular, the purpose of the present invention is to search invalidity references relating to a specific patent, and to search for documents cited in domestic examination and litigation processes as well as examination and litigation processes of patent families, as well as to perform additional search of documents based on searched documents, such as cited/uncited documents of the searched documents and documents having the same classification code, thereby securing the largest mother population possible required to search invalidity references, and selecting and providing usable invalidity references to the user by assigning priority by applying weight to the mother population that has been secured.

Description

Invalid information provision method and invalid information provision server

The present invention relates to a method for providing invalid information related to a specific patent to a user. Specifically, the present invention aims to search for invalid validations related to a specific patent, but searches for documents cited in the examination process and dispute process of family patent as well as documents cited in domestic examination process and dispute process, Additional literature search is performed based on the searched documents such as citations / cited documents of documents and documents with the same classification code to secure as many populations as possible for invalid validation, and to rank the weighted ones within the acquired population. The purpose of the screening is to provide a sort of invalid validation available to the user.

As interest in intellectual property rights increases, the number of disputes related to this is increasing. In particular, there are a growing number of cases of exercising rights based on the patent rights they hold, and in proportion to this, cases of invalidating the patent rights that are the basis for exercising the rights are also increasing.

In order to invalidate a patent right, various legal examinations are conducted, including the reason for the failure to describe whether the specification of the patent is clearly written or supported by the detailed description of the invention. It is the most important factor in doing so.

On the other hand, in order to examine the invalidity of novelty or progressive defects, it is important to find invalid validation that can be accurately compared with the target patent as much as possible. Until now, in most cases, invalid validation is based on keyword input from the database. It is simply a matter of reviewing the claims and detailed descriptions one by one, or by examining citations revealed in the review of some family cases.

The present invention is proposed to solve the difficulty of conventional invalid validation search will be described in more detail below. The present invention has been invented on the basis of the above technical background and in order to meet the salping technical needs from above, as well as to provide additional technical elements that cannot be easily invented by those skilled in the art.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a quick and accurate retrieval of invalid validation for a particular patent.

In particular, the present invention is to quickly search only relevant documents by searching the data cited in the examination stage, dispute stage, etc. of a particular patent in constructing a population required for invalid validation screening, and further search additional literature based on the documents previously searched By doing so, it aims to construct a reliable population.

In addition, an object of the present invention is to provide only invalid validation that can be directly available to the user by going through a separate screening process within the population configured in the above manner.

In order to solve the above problems, the invalid information providing method according to the present invention comprises the steps of (a) receiving bibliographic information for any patent; (b) retrieving a plurality of citations associated with the patent; (c) searching for additional literature based on any of the plurality of cited references.

In addition, step (c) in the method for providing invalid information may further include searching additional documents belonging to the same classification code as the corresponding citations, with respect to any citations among the searched citations. .

Also, in the invalid information providing method, step (c) may include: searching for additional documents cited by the citations with respect to any citations among the searched citations;

It may further include.

Also, in the invalid information providing method, step (c) may include: searching for an additional document cited by the citation for any citation of the searched citations;

It may further include.

Also, in the invalid information providing method, step (c) may further include retrieving additional documents that are related to the relevant citations and family patents with respect to any of the searched citations. have.

In addition, in the method for providing invalid information, step (c) includes a patent publication in which the inventor of the citation is included as an inventor, and the inventor of the citation is recorded as an author with respect to any of the citations retrieved. The method may further include searching for a paper, a contribution or a report.

In addition, the method for providing invalid information may include: (b-1) applying weights to the plurality of searched cited documents after the step (b); It may further include; (b-2) step of selecting the citation in the order of high weight.

In this case, step (c) may search for additional documents based on any of the citations selected in the step (b-2).

In addition, the method for providing invalid information may include: (c-1) weighting the additional documents searched after the step (c); It may further include; (c-2) step of selecting additional documents in the order of high weight.

In addition, in the invalid information providing method, step (c) may include determining whether the citations retrieved in step (b) are submitted as prior documents during the examination process in the specific country. .

In this case, step (b) may be characterized in that the citations cited in the examination process, the judgment process or the litigation process of the family patent that has a family relationship with the patent.

According to the present invention there is an effect that can be quickly retrieved invalid invalidation for a particular patent.

In addition, according to the present invention, since the invalid validation is selected after forming a population related to the target patent, an invalid validation having a high accuracy can be searched when compared with the target patent.

Figure 1 shows in order the first embodiment of the invalid information providing method according to the present invention.

2 shows in sequence a second embodiment of a method for providing invalid information according to the present invention.

3 illustrates a manner of searching for a citation for a target patent.

Figure 4 shows the process of further searching based on any of the searched citations.

FIG. 5 shows an example of performing a weighting operation on the retrieved documents (different weighting according to the step in which the cited documents are cited).

FIG. 6 shows another example of weighting the searched documents (different weighting according to the cited subjects).

FIG. 7 illustrates a method of determining whether the cited documents have been submitted as prior documents during the review process in the United States with reference to the citation points of the retrieved cited documents.

8 shows a detailed configuration of the invalid information providing server according to the present invention.

Details of the object and technical configuration of the present invention and the resulting effects will be more clearly understood by the following detailed description based on the accompanying drawings. With reference to the accompanying drawings will be described in detail an embodiment according to the present invention.

The embodiments disclosed herein should not be interpreted or used as limiting the scope of the invention. It is obvious to those skilled in the art that the description, including the embodiments herein, has a variety of applications. Accordingly, certain embodiments described in the detailed description of the present invention are illustrative for better understanding of the present invention and are not intended to limit the scope of the present invention to the embodiments.

The functional blocks shown in the figures and described below are only examples of possible implementations. Other functional blocks may be used in other implementations without departing from the spirit and scope of the detailed description. Also, while one or more functional blocks of the present invention are represented by separate blocks, one or more of the functional blocks of the present invention may be a combination of various hardware and software configurations that perform the same function.

In addition, the expression of including certain components merely refers to the presence of the components as an open expression, and should not be understood as excluding additional components.

Further, when a component is referred to as being connected or connected to another component, it should be understood that there may be a direct connection or connection to that other component, but there may be other components in between.

In addition, an expression such as 'first' and 'second' is used only for distinguishing a plurality of components, and does not limit the order or other features between the components.

When a part is said to be "connected" with another part, it includes not only the case where it is "directly connected" but also the case where it is "indirectly connected" with the other member in between. In addition, when a part is said to "include" a certain component, this means that it may further include other components, without excluding the other components unless otherwise stated.

Hereinafter, a method for providing invalid information and a server for providing invalid information according to the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

According to the invalid information providing method according to the present invention, unlike the conventional search for invalid validation, documents that are related to the target patent to determine the likelihood of invalidity, and other documents that are related to such documents, basically The main technical idea is to search for literatures that have a linkage with a target patent and to construct a population, and to select invalid validations available to users.

Referring to this concept of the present invention, the invalid information providing method according to the present invention may be implemented in the manner of FIGS. 1 and 2.

1 is a first embodiment of the invalid information providing method according to the present invention according to the target patent specification (S101), citation search (S102), additional literature search (S103) based on the citations obtained in the citation search (S103) , Weighted calculation (S104), invalid validation screening (S105), and providing invalid validation to the user (S106).

2 is a second embodiment of the invalid information providing method, the embodiment is the target patent specification (S201), the first citation search (S202), the weight calculation for the searched citations (S203), citation selection (S204) ), Searching for additional literature based on the selected citations (S205), and providing invalid validation (selected citations and additional literature) to the user (S206).

The main difference between the first embodiment and the second embodiment is that, in the case of the first embodiment, the invalid validation is performed after weighting the documents in the population constituted by the citation search and additional document search steps, An example is that citations having high validity are first selected according to a weighting operation after citation citations, and additional citations are searched on the selected citations to provide the selected citations and additional citations to the user. . That is, the two may be distinguished according to when the document is selected according to the weighting operation, but searching for citations, searching for additional literature, and performing weighting operations are essentially the same. something to do.

Hereinafter, each step will be described in detail.

First, the step of specifying the target patent is a step of specifying the registered patent that the user wants to examine the possibility of invalidation. In the invalid information providing method according to the present invention, the service providing subject is an invalid information providing server, and a user may directly input bibliographic information of a target patent through an input means (keyboard, mouse, etc.) of the server, or the user may Bibliography of the target patent can also be entered through a terminal connected to the network (smartphone, desktop computer, laptop computer, etc.).

At this time, the bibliographic information for specifying the target patent may include an application number, registration number, publication number, name of the invention, applicant, inventor, application date, publication date, registration date and the like.

Next, the citation search step will be described.

After the target patent is specified, the invalid information providing server searches for relevant citations with reference to the examination pass, the trial pass, the lawsuit pass, the examination pass of the family patent, the trial pass, the lawsuit pass, and the like. This citation retrieval step can be understood as the first step to construct a population of citations, that is, a pool, to find invalid validation, and the invalid information provision server selects future invalid validation by securing as many citations as possible. The accuracy can be increased. 3 schematically illustrates a process of constructing a population through a citation search step.

As to the specific implementation method of citation search, the invalid information providing server examines the target patent from the database provided by the respective patent offices or the information provider's database which processes and reproduces the database provided by the patent offices of each country. Information such as progress, proceedings, etc. may be received, wherein the information may also include citations cited in each step, that is, information on the invention to be compared. That is, in the examination step of the target patent, the citation documents referenced by the examiner in the examination process, party judgments such as invalid trials, and the comparison subject invention cited by the claimant in the litigation may be included in the progress information. The invalid information providing server may extract and use information corresponding to the cited documents from the file type data received from the database.

In the meantime, the invalid information providing server may additionally obtain citations related to the family case of the target patent. However, foreign patent-related procedures may be different from the domestic, but the present invention can be obtained as a cited document when there is a cited document among all procedures such as the family gun examination stage, trial stage, litigation stage, etc. It should be understood.

Next, we will look at the additional literature search step.

In the previous citation search step, after a predetermined level of population, that is, a certain number of citations are searched, the invalid information providing server performs further reference search based on the citations. Additional literature search is a step to further expand the previously constructed population, including citations / cited citations of retrieved citations, documents related to citations and family patents, inventions with the same citations and inventors or applicants By further searching the same invention, the aim is to secure a wider range of additional literature not obtained in the previous citation search step. 4 is a schematic representation for easy understanding of further literature search steps.

Specifically, the invalid information providing server selects any cited reference among the cited references obtained above, and further searches for another reference cited based on the cited reference and another reference cited by the cited reference. do. Preferably, the invalid information providing server may further search for citations or cited documents up to three depths (3-depth). In this case, the depth is a numerical value indicating how many steps the citation / quotation is made based on an arbitrary citation. For example, a reference citing an arbitrary reference citation is 1 depth. The documents cited again are 2 depths based on the above-mentioned arbitrary reference documents, and the documents cited again from the cited documents of 2 depths are defined as 3 depths based on the above arbitrary reference documents.

In addition, the invalid information providing server may select any cited reference among the acquired cited references and further search for the literature related to the cited reference and the family patent. Literature related to a family patent refers to an application filed in a domestic or other country with the above-mentioned cited as a priority or in the case where the cited document is filed with a priority claim.

On the other hand, the invalid information providing server may select any of the obtained citations and may further search for the same documents with the citations and the applicant or inventor. That is, the invalid information providing server may search for the same document in which the subject of the application and the subject of the invention search for the same document and obtain the result as an additional search result.

On the other hand, the invalid information providing server may select any citations among the obtained citations and search for documents in which the citations and the patent classification code are the same.

The invalid information providing server searches for the cited / cited documents, the same documents of the applicant / inventor, and the same patent classification code for any cited literature (reference literature) as above, and then cites the results configured in the cited literature search step. You can increase the size of the population by merging them into a set of documents, or population.

On the other hand, the invalid information providing server may perform an additional literature search for all or part of the cited literature obtained in the cited reference search step.

Next, we will look at the weight calculation step.

The weighting operation is a step for distinguishing utilization among documents by assigning different values according to conditions for a series of documents obtained by the citation search step and the additional document search step. Various factors may be considered in the condition for weighting. For example, the invalid information providing server may be weighted according to the country in which each citation is cited, according to the stage in which each citation is cited, the type of each citation, and who is citing each citation. Can be given differently.

FIG. 5 is a diagram for explaining an example in which weights are differently assigned according to the steps in which the cited documents are cited. According to FIG. 5, the target patents may be searched for citations of Comparative Invention # 1 to Comparative Invention # 3 in the registration process, and Comparative Invention # 4 to Comparative Invention # 8 in the process of appealing other invalid trials and trials. This citation can be searched by. At this time, the invalid information providing server may assign the same weight to the citations retrieved in the registration process of the target patent in a batch, and collectively for the citations retrieved in the dispute process (invalid trial and cancellation of litigation) of the target patent. Can be weighted with another value. At this time, how much weight to give citations at any stage may be arbitrarily set by the server manufacturer, or may be adjusted by a user using the service. In the above embodiment, preferably, a higher value weight may be assigned to the citations in the dispute process than the citations in the registration process, which means that the citations cited in the dispute process are more politically searched by the parties to the dispute. This is because the likelihood of searching for similar comparative inventions through the process is high.

On the other hand, the invalid information providing server may give different weights according to more detailed conditions for the citations in the registration process, dispute process.

For example, in the registration process of the target patent, the comparable inventions # 1 and # 2 may be cited by the examiner in the first notification notice and the comparable invention # 3 in the second notification notice. May assign different weights to the comparative inventions cited in the two notification notification procedures. In other words, the invalid information providing server may assign 3 points to the comparative invention # 1, which is the main cited invention cited in the first notice of notification, and 2 points to the comparative object # 2, and quote from the second notice of notification. The weight of 4 points can be assigned to the comparison target invention # 3. If a second complainant is cited for an additional comparable invention, it may be a document that is more similar to the subject patent retrieved by the examiner's further prior art search.

In addition, the invalid information providing server may give different weights to the dispute process in the above manner. For example, if an invalid trial and trial decision were filed against a target patent, the comparable inventions # 4 and # 5 were cited when the invalid trial was filed, and the comparable invention # 6 was cited when the applicant submitted a subsequent opinion. If it is assumed that the comparable invention # 7 is cited in the litigation, and the comparable invention # 8 is cited later in the preliminary submission, the invalid information provision server will assign a higher weight to the comparable inventions submitted later in time. It can be given. That is, Comparative Invention # 4 is 5 points, Comparative Invention # 5 is 6 points, Comparative Invention # 6 is 7 points, Comparative Invention # 7 is 8 points, and Comparative Invention # 8 is 9 points. have.

As such, the invalid information providing server may assign different weights to the documents cited in the registration process and the dispute process of the target patent, depending on when each document is cited.

On the other hand, it is to be understood that the invalid information providing server may give different weights depending on when the documents are cited at any time during the procedure being carried out not only in Korea but also abroad.

For example, in Japan, there is a patent opposition system in addition to the patent invalidity trial system. The patent opposition system can be applied for anyone for six months from the date of patent. Billing). As described above, the invalid information providing server according to the present invention may also assign weights to documents cited in a patent opposition procedure separately existing in Japan.

Also in Europe, search report. Different procedures exist in Korea, such as the patent opposition system, and the invalid information provision server according to the present invention provides the documents cited in each procedure such as search examination, substantive examination, objection, dispute (invalid trial and litigation), etc. Each can be given a different weight.

On the other hand, in the United States, procedures different from those in Korea exist, such as the Inter Partes Review (IPR) review system, and the invalid information providing server according to the present invention includes an application, a substantial examination, an IDS submission, an IPR, and a dispute The documents cited in each procedure, such as litigation), can be given different weights at different time points.

6 shows an example in which weights are assigned differently according to the subjects citing documents.

In the examination process or dispute process of the target patent, the citations can be used differently depending on who cited. For example, the comparative invention cited by the examiner at the examination stage of the target patent and the comparative invention cited by the claimant at the time of an invalid trial may have different uses in relation to the target patent. This is inevitably caused by the difference in manpower, time, etc. required for the search, the weight calculation according to the present invention to reflect the difference in the utilization of the cited literature that must occur in this environment when selecting invalid validation It is for.

Referring to FIG. 6, for example, the invalid information providing server has one point for documents cited directly by the applicant, two points for documents cited by the examiner (the examiner), and documents cited by the invalidity claimant. Three points can be given for the document, and four points for the document cited by the claimant.

Meanwhile, the invalid information providing server may assign different weights for different countries or different weights according to types of citations in addition to the embodiments of FIGS. 5 and 6. At this time, the type of citation may include a patent publication, utility model publication, article, catalog or web page.

We have looked at the weighting step.

After the weight calculation step for the documents in the population, the invalid information providing server generates the citation list in the order of the high value according to the weight calculation result and provides the citation list to the user. At this time, the invalid information providing server may select and provide only a predetermined number of citations in order of high weight to the user, or provide all documents in a population in order of high weight.

In addition, when providing a document to the user at this time, in addition to the bibliography of the document, it can also provide information on how many points each document is weighted under. In this case, the information provided may include text, graphs, and other forms that the user can visually recognize.

On the other hand, the invalid information providing server according to the present invention, in addition to selecting invalid validation according to the weight from the population, by referring to the citation point of the citations in the population, whether the citations were submitted as prior literature during the review process in any particular country If it is determined that the document has not been submitted, the uncited citation may be screened as invalid validation. For example, there is an obligation to submit an IDS in the US patent application process, which refers to the applicant's obligation to submit to the US Patent and Trademark Office within a certain period of time when the invention is found in other countries. The invalid information providing server according to the present invention can provide a user with invalid verifiable invalidation against US registered patents by searching for citations in violation of the IDS obligation in the population configured through the citation search step.

7 shows an embodiment thereof. According to Figure 7, the US Patent No. 6856383 registered in the United States has a filing date 1998.09.05. And 2004.07.16. Assuming the NOA is registered, the citations were not submitted as IDS within a certain period of time in the US filing process, even though citations were submitted during the process of reviewing family applications in other countries, ie Japan and Europe. For example, the invalid information providing server may provide the user with the citations submitted during the above-mentioned Japanese and European judging process as invalid high validations.

8 is a block diagram illustrating a detailed configuration of the invalid information providing server according to the present invention.

According to FIG. 8, the invalid information providing server includes a receiver 110, a searcher 120, a calculator 130, and a controller 140.

The reception unit 110 receives bibliographic details of the target patent from the user and receives information for specifying the target patent as described above. In this case, the receiving unit 110 is received from the input means when the user inputs directly through the input means provided in the invalid information providing server, via the network when the user inputs through a terminal connected to the network. Receive bibliography.

Next, the search unit 120 searches for citations for the target patent specified above, or further searches based on the searched citations. In this case, the cited reference search step and the additional reference search step are described in detail above, and thus will be omitted.

Next, the calculation unit 130 performs a weighting operation on the citations and additional documents that have been searched, and further determines whether a document which should be submitted in a specific country is not submitted with reference to the citation point of the citations. . That is, the operation unit 130 is configured to screen invalid validation after performing a series of operations on the searched cited documents and / or additional documents.

Finally, the controller 140 collectively controls the receiver, the searcher, and the calculator. The control unit may include at least one arithmetic unit, wherein the arithmetic unit is a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU), programmable device elements (CPLD, FPGA) implemented for a specific purpose, ASICs (ASIC) Or a microcontroller chip.

While preferred embodiments and applications of the present invention have been illustrated and described above, the present invention is not limited to the specific embodiments and applications described above, and the present invention may be made without departing from the spirit of the invention as claimed in the claims. Various modifications can be made by those skilled in the art, and these modifications should not be distinguished from the technical spirit or the scope of the present invention.

Claims (11)

1. In the invalid information providing server provides invalid information,

   (a) receiving bibliographic information for any patent;

   (b) retrieving a plurality of citations associated with the patent;

   (c) searching for additional literature based on any of the plurality of cited references;

   Invalid information providing method comprising a.
2. The method of claim 1,

   (c) step,

   For any of the citations retrieved above,

   Searching for additional documents belonging to the same classification code as the cited document;

   Invalid information providing method further comprising.
3. The method of claim 1,

   (c) step,

   For any of the citations retrieved above,

   Searching for additional literature cited by the cited literature;

   Invalid information providing method further comprising.
4. The method of claim 1,

   (c) step,

   For any of the citations retrieved above,

   Searching for additional documents cited by the cited document;

   Invalid information providing method further comprising.
5. The method of claim 1,

   (c) step,

   For any of the citations retrieved above,

   Retrieving additional literature that is related to the cited literature and the family patent;

   Invalid information providing method further comprising.
6. The method of claim 1,

   (c) step,

   For any of the citations retrieved above,

   Retrieving a patent publication including an inventor of the cited document as an inventor, a paper, a contribution or a report in which the inventor of the cited document is written as an author;

   Invalid information providing method further comprising.
7. The method of claim 1,

   After step (b),

   (B-1) weighting each of the plurality of cited documents;

   (B-2) selecting the citations in the order of high weight;

   Invalid information providing method further comprising.
8. The method of claim 7, wherein

   Step (c), the invalid information providing method, characterized in that for searching for additional documents based on any of the citations selected in the step (b-2).
9. The method of claim 1,

   After the step (c),

   (C-1) respectively weighting the retrieved additional documents;

   (C-2) selecting additional documents according to the order of high weight;

   Invalid information providing method comprising a further.
10. The method of claim 1,

    Step (c) is,

    Determining whether the citations retrieved in step (b) have been submitted as prior documents during the review process in the specific country;

    Invalid information providing method characterized in that.
11. The method of claim 10,

    In step (b),

    Method for providing invalid information, characterized in that for retrieving the citations cited in the examination process, judgment process or litigation process of the family patent that has a family relationship with the patent.

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