| name | search-prior-art |
| title | Search Prior Art |
| description | Search for prior art relevant to a specific invention or patent claim. Covers patent literature, non-patent literature (academic papers, products, open source), defensive publications, and standard-essential patents. Use when evaluating whether an invention is novel and non-obvious before filing, challenging the validity of an existing patent, supporting a freedom-to- operate analysis, documenting a defensive publication, or responding to a patent office action questioning novelty or obviousness. |
| author | pjt222 |
| author_url | https://github.com/pjt222/agent-almanac/tree/main/i18n/caveman-lite/skills/search-prior-art |
| license | MIT |
| version | 0.1.0 |
| execution_mode | open |
| jurisdiction | general |
| practice | ip |
| language | en |
Search Prior Art
Conduct a structured prior art search to find publications, patents, products, or disclosures that predate a specific invention. Used to assess patentability (can this be patented?), challenge validity (should this patent have been granted?), or establish freedom-to-operate (is this design covered by existing rights?).
When to Use
- Evaluating whether an invention is novel and non-obvious before filing a patent application
- Challenging the validity of an existing patent by finding prior art the examiner missed
- Supporting a freedom-to-operate analysis by finding prior art that limits a blocking patent's scope
- Documenting a defensive publication to prevent others from patenting a concept
- Responding to a patent office action that questions novelty or obviousness
Inputs
- Required: Invention description (what it does, how it works, what problem it solves)
- Required: Search purpose (patentability, invalidity, FTO, defensive)
- Required: Critical date (filing date of the patent application, or invention date for prior art)
- Optional: Known related patents or publications
- Optional: Technology classification codes (IPC, CPC)
- Optional: Key inventors or companies in the field
Procedure
Step 1: Decompose the Invention into Searchable Elements
Break the invention into its constituent technical features.
- Read the invention description (or patent claims if searching against an existing patent)
- Extract the essential elements — each independent technical feature:
- What components does it have?
- What steps does the process follow?
- What technical effect does it achieve?
- What problem does it solve and how?
- Identify the novel combination — what makes this different from the known art:
- Is it a new element added to known elements?
- Is it a new combination of known elements?
- Is it a known element applied in a new field?
- Generate search terms for each element:
- Technical terms, synonyms, and abbreviations
- Broader and narrower terms (hierarchy)
- Alternative descriptions of the same concept
- Document the Search Map: elements, terms, and relationships
Search Map Example:
+------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+
| Element | Search Terms | Priority |
+------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+
| Attention layer | attention mechanism, self- | High |
| | attention, multi-head attention | |
| Sparse routing | mixture of experts, sparse MoE, | High |
| | top-k routing, expert selection | |
| Training method | knowledge distillation, teacher- | Medium |
| | student, progressive training | |
+------------------+-----------------------------------+-----------+
