KnowThis Tutorial: Marketing Method Patents

The USPTO patent database is massive and searching sometimes is like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, looking to see if your marketing process may infringe on a patent or to see if someone has an application that is being reviewed can be accomplished within a reasonable period of time if certain search strategies are followed.

Competitor Name Search
The first effort at searching for a competitive MMP is to try and locate patents held by competitors by concentrating on the Assignee Name Field. If this does not work try entering the competitor’s name and search All Fields. But be aware that while an All Fields search may turn up a mention of the competitor, particularly in the Reference and Background sections of the patent, there is a chance it will not show all competitor’s patent information especially if the company acquired the patent from someone else or if the patent is not specifically assigned to the company. Yet the mention of a competitor may still be useful. For example, someone who was not considered a competitor may have filed a patent application and included a competitor’s name in the Background section. Thus, while looking for one thing the searcher stumbles upon another. This is a typical occurrence in patent searching.

Industry, Product or Process Search
Whether searching on competitor’s name is fruitful or not, it is important that MMP search continue since: 1) others not on a company’s competitor list may hold patents, and 2) not all patents list an Assignee Name though inventors may be employees of a competitor. The next best option after Assignee Name search is to search using terms that best describe what your business does. You can start by using terms that are generic to a business or business function, though this could be too broad. For instance, a generic term such as “advertising” will yield thousands of results but combining “advertising” with such terms as “Internet,” “direct mail,” or “television” will produce more narrow results. Additional suggestions:

• To narrow things down further, search using phrases. This can be done by enclosing the phrase in parentheses (e.g., “online advertising”).
• Identify a list of similar terms that could be used by others in describing the industry, product or process. For instance, “online advertising” could also be “Internet advertising,” “web advertising,” “website advertising,” “advertising on the Internet,” etc.
• The USPTO makes it fairly easy to find the instance of your keyword search by showing the term in a bold, italic format when it presents the patent information. However, it can still take time to find this in large documents. In these cases use the Find command in your browser. For Windows systems this is generally activated by holding down the Control and Letter F keys at the same time.