Common Search and Examination Support Tools (Search Systems)

Vision

An intellectual property world where Intellectual Property (IPOs)/Organizations support a common search and examination environment so each has the ability to produce and reproduce equivalent search results for each application that is examined.

The Common Search Environment may be achieved by multiple approaches and can be implemented incrementally. Within the common environment, a balance needs to be found between, on the one hand, reduction of costs and repeatability of results provided by a single shared system, and, on the other hand, the examiners' choice of multiple systems in performing a search within their discretion which may increase examination quality and efficiency due to characteristics of languages and differences of systems and frameworks in IP5 offices. The common search environment will support the exchange of information with the examination tools of the five offices to the maximum extent possible, taking into account of their different examination procedures.

Definition of Scope

• The Common Search Environment will be made up for search engine(s) accessible at each IPO that will provide examiners the ability to perform searches which produce the equivalent results of searches performed in any other IPO in every supported language
• Presenting the same family members to examiners for their determination on citing
• The Common Search Environment will access a common set of records referred to as a common documentation database to support searching worldwide
• The Common Search Environment will be available for 24/7 operation for examiners and the IP customers worldwide
• The Common Search Environment will be architected to satisfy performance metrics of each IPO (Examples: display images in less than 1 second first image, 1/2 second additional images, 99.5% of searches complete in 10 seconds or less)
• The Common Search Environment will support both textual and image content documents and forward and backward citation searching
• The Common Search Environment will support teaching using multiple search engines federated searches)
• The Common Search Environment will support document translation and capturing of source document and search string translation, as necessary

Contribution to Work Sharing

Intellectual Property Offices will have confidence that:

• common examination and search tools are available to the intellectual property community;
• end-user tools utilized to perform a prior art search are sufficient for both mutual and unique search requirements;
• collection of database information is complete and sufficient for both mutual and unique prior requirements;
• tools are utilized to record the prior art search activities and examination decisions are sufficient for both mutual and unique application file wrapper/dossier completeness and archival purposes;
• operational environments and work products facilitate the reusability of prior work products.