Patents State-of-the-art

Methods and sources employed in making literature and patent searches for the patent department of a chemical research organization are discussed. Searches are classified according to the purpose they are designed to serve and the techniques employed vary accordingly. Patent searches to determine patentability, state of the art, infringement, and validity are described. 

Most of the requests from the patent department for literature and patent searches fall into four general classes patentability, state of the art, infringement,... 

Kozhukharov, V., Machkova, M., Ivanova, M. and Brashkova, N. (2001) Patents state of the art in SOFCs application. Proceedings of Seventh International Symposium on Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFC VII), Tsukuba, Japan. 

At least three types of citations in patents can be identified inventors citations found in the patent specification, examiners citations found on issued U.S. patents, and examiners citations found on pubHshed appHcations and granted patents from other countries. A patent inventor cites prior art in order to distance the invention from that art, rather than to show a close relationship. Whereas scientific researchers may want to show how closely they have built on what went before, for an inventor that can suggest anticipation or at least obviousness. Thus, citations within a patent typicaHy try to demonstrate the inadequacies of prior inventions and the uniqueness of the patentee s own work. References tied by this type of citation can be usefiil in developing a picture of the state of the art, but often show sharply differing technologies. 

A distinct difference between examiners citations on granted U.S. patents and those on pubHshed patent appHcations is that the latter can indeed represent direct anticipation. Thus they represent a close subject relationship to the document in question. An important factor in the citations on EPO and PCT appHcations is that they are categorized by the examiner with regard to their relevance documents of particular relevance in themselves, documents of particular relevance in combination with some other document(s), and documents defining the general state of the art but of no particular relevance in themselves. Clearly not aH citations have the same value. 

Berks AH. Cnrrent state of the art of Marknsh topological search systems. World Patent / /2001 23 5-13. 

Recently, rhodium and ruthenium-based carbon-supported sulfide electrocatalysts were synthesized by different established methods and evaluated as ODP cathodic catalysts in a chlorine-saturated hydrochloric acid environment with respect to both economic and industrial considerations [46]. In particular, patented E-TEK methods as well as a non-aqueous method were used to produce binary RhjcSy and Ru Sy in addition, some of the more popular Mo, Co, Rh, and Redoped RuxSy catalysts for acid electrolyte fuel cell ORR applications were also prepared. The roles of both crystallinity and morphology of the electrocatalysts were investigated. Their activity for ORR was compared to state-of-the-art Pt/C and Rh/C systems. The Rh Sy/C, CojcRuyS /C, and Ru Sy/C materials synthesized by the E-TEK methods exhibited appreciable stability and activity for ORR under these conditions. The Ru-based materials showed good depolarizing behavior. Considering that ruthenium is about seven times less expensive than rhodium, these Ru-based electrocatalysts may prove to be a viable low-cost alternative to Rh Sy systems for the ODC HCl electrolysis industry. 

State-of-the-art multipurpose plants, in fine chemical production, 11 437—439 State-of-the-art patent information searches, 18 235... 

The objective of this book is to identify and highlight significant state-of-the-art research in 24 active areas of polymer chemistry reported in current U.S. patent applications occurring in academic, government, and industrial centers. A further objective is to provide chemical researchers with descriptions of advances in these areas as well as detailing synthetic methods for preparing key intermediates and products provided from these technical centers. Wherever possible key references associated with each entry have been supplied to provide a chemical and evolutionary context for the reader. 

The state of the art shall be held to comprise everything made available to the public by means of a written or oral description, by use, or in any other way, before the date of filing of the European patent application. 

This means that an invention is considered new only if it does not form part of the broadly defined public state of the art before the date of filing of the European patent application (or the corresponding priority-establishing application). The state of the art in the sense of the EPC is not locally restricted. When examining the claims of the patent application with regard to their novelty, the European Patent Office considers prior publication of the invention irrespective of whether the publication occurred in one of the member states of the EPC or elsewhere. 

The role of solvent and of promoters has been extensively discussed in open literature, but based on the discussion of patents reported in the previous section it may be evidenced that the critical aspects were not properly identified. We thus report some specific comments below, which are not intended to be a systematic discussion of the state-of-the-art ... 

The intense patent activity in this area attests to the vast interest for implementing nonphosgene technologies to produce organic carbonates [12]. Hence, the state of the art in research for the three chemical routes based on C02 (i.e., transesterification, urea alcoholysis, and direct carbonation) is discussed in the following sections. 

Process spectroscopy is, almost by definition, done to measure and control an industrial process. Almost all of the work is driven by business needs, such as improving profits or product quality. In competitive business environments, firms preserve every advantage possible by protecting valuable measurement systems as trade secrets. Thus, firms are often reluctant to reveal process spectroscopy applications, whether successful or not. Notable exceptions to this include the desire for positive publicity around improved safety or to direct the regulatory environment. Often, companies will patent the work and will not publish in a scientific journal until after the patent is filed, if ever. Many applications, such as the classic titanium oxide-monitoring paper, are revealed only years after implementation. As a consequence, the current state of the art in the literature is quite likely far out of date. 

An invention possesses novelty when the technical knowledge for which the patent protection is sought is not included in the state of the art. Not in the state of the art is usually defined as all the information not available to the public, in any form of disclosure - oral, written, digitized, use/ exploitation, among others - at the time of filing the patent application. Absolute novelty is adopted by most countries, meaning that which has not been disclosed anywhere in the world. 

The following papers focus mainly on various aspects associated with the self-assembly of peptides. Peptides are relatively short sequences of amino acids, typically less than 50. The limited number of residues brings simplicity but still allows for sufficient differentiation to study self-assembly in its various details. The compositional freedom of the primary molecule allows for a sufficiently rich hierarchical structure creation through aggregation of individual peptides into supramolecular constructs resulting in interesting materials. This chapter looks into relevant patent literature as a reflection of the state of the art of technology in peptide self-assembly. 

We are also witnessing a considerable increase in new specialized literature. The most important of these is the standard work Twin Screw Extrusion by J. L. White [44]. It is a rich source of information, both about the historical development and the state-of-the-art technology, as well as about patent literature and specialized publications. A few examples [45,46] from the wide-ranging specialized literature on the subject of co-rotating extruders should be mentioned here. 

In early 1981, Byk Gulden decided gradually to redirect more of the research resources away from anti-muscarinics programme [22,23] to PPIs. At this time, picoprazole became the new state of the art (Fig. 3.5) [24,25]. Some data on pico-prazole had been published previously in Nature [26]. Furthermore, in spring 1981 Byk Gulden became aware of Hassle s patent EP 5129, which focused on the pyridine part of the timoprazole skeleton [27]. 

The proposed applications include the identification of banknote paper, security paper, bank cards, art objects, or even bar codes. The marks can be invisible or hidden. Related patents are mentioned to describe the state of the art, one of which also uses radical-ion organic conductors [73]. 

A patentable invention must be new. Novelty excludes the "state of the art" (also "prior art") which is what was "made available to the public by means of a written or oral description, by use, or in any other way, before the date of filing of the. .. patent application" (Article 54, European Patent Convention, EPC). Under the EPC the content of an earlier European patent application (which is not yet published) is also considered as state of the art. 

It is not necessary for a patentable invention to be the result of an ingenious idea. Article 56 EPC requires an "inventive step" which is "not obvious to a person skilled in the art", regarding the state of the art at the time the application was filed. Similarly in the USA "... a patent may not be obtained. .. if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains" (35 USC, 103). 

It is currently unclear whether, based on the current state of the art, a patent following the above-mentioned example could be extended to recombinant derivatives of the native protein. One might argue that, once the native protein is known and accessible, it needs no inventiveness to sequence the amino acids for parts of this protein, synthesize the corresponding DNAs, use these as probes to identify and isolate the entire coding sequence of the protein, which is then inserted into a suitable expression system to produce the protein in any desired form and quantity. Experience, however, teaches that it still requires some non-obvious steps and usually more than a limited degree of experimentation (often even a stroke of luck) to get there and to achieve the desired utility with recombinant polypeptides. For a vaccine it may be necessary to find and express the important epitopes in an appropriate (still unknown) way and to develop adequate purification and further processing protocols (with unpredictable technical... 

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