Patent Search in Asia

Patent Offices across Asia handle millions of patent filings every year and performing a patent search covering multiple jurisdictions can get challenging sometimes. Specifically, conducting a patent search for a patent research project that requires knowledge of multiple Asian languages is a highly knowledgeable task aimed at providing in-depth patent research and analytics.

Among top patent filing countries, Japan, China and Korea lead the patent filers from Asia. One major issue with patents in China, Japan and Korea is that most of the patents are filed in East Asian languages, including Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Therefore, while conducting patent prior art searches, relevant patent search results may be overlooked.

Patent Search – Challenges

The challenges faced by patent searchers and patent analysts while performing patent analysis based on patent search results from Asian patent offices include language barriers, lack of effective human translation and errors in machine translations. Accordingly, it requires high degree of research and language skills to search patent offices using East Asian languages.

Specifically, China patent office provides SIPO Patent Database, Japanese patent office provides IPDL of JPO, Korean patent office provides KIPRIS, and Taiwan patent office provides TIPO Patent Database. While conducting patent searches in these countries, the translations may not prove effective due to the stark differences from English language based on meanings or pronunciations. Also, languages including Chinese, Korean and Japanese have no alphabets and words are formed by combining two or more characters that may be used to represent a symbol.

Therefore, significant skills are required to formulate patent search strings with appropriate limitations so that the meaning of search strings is properly conveyed. In use, patent search strings using native languages are employed to ensure patent searches and comprehensive and efficient. The patent search results can further be narrowed down by using Assignee based strings that are formed after researching active companies which are filing patents in the jurisdiction of interest. Similarly, it is advisable to screen patent search results based on patent classifications, inventors, and the like.

Patent Search Process

With a view to ensure the quality of patent searches is maintained, it is advisable to engage patent translation professionals while performing patent searches. The paten translators can translate patent titles, bibliographic data, claims, abstracts and entire description of patent search results from languages like Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

By following above-mentioned strategies, patent searches can be conducted across Asia, including jurisdictions like Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, and the like.

Tech Corp Group is aimed at decoding Patents, Technology and Intellectual Property (IP) in Asia – Japan, Korea, China, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and Brunei. We provide international solutions of Patent, Technology & Intellectual Property (IP) Research Services in Asia.

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