How it works
Invalidity and prior-art search, run the way an examiner runs it.
Classification first, every reference read in the original, and the full search record in the report — so a negative result arrives as evidence, not an assurance.
The searches
Start small. Go further only if the art is there.
A preliminary search answers “is there anything here?” in a day. The signed searches answer “what exactly, and where does it read on the claim?” Each step adds scope or a signature.
Case Brief · $199 · 2 business days
The record behind the case, before you search.
One patent case, one document: why the patent was allowed, what has already been tried against it, how the plaintiff reads its own claims, and where every case in the campaign stands. Gathered from the file wrappers, the dockets and the PTAB record, checked, and cited source by source.
Facts and the record's own words. No opinion on validity, infringement or the merits.
- Why it was allowed. The prosecution timeline, the reasons for allowance verbatim, the priority the examiner granted, and what the examiner never searched.
- The exclusion list. Every reference already of record, raised at the Board, at PTAB or in a declaratory-judgment action — and who raised it.
- The plaintiff's own reading. The asserted claims by defendant, and what the plaintiff's claim charts say each element is in the accused product.
- Rulings and the campaign. Every case, counsel of record, pending motion and ruling across the patent family, PTAB status, and the dates that matter.
What you receive
Work product your team can use directly, not a list of hits.
Element-by-element claim charts
Each claim broken into limitations, each limitation mapped to a pinpoint citation — column and line, paragraph, or figure element.
§102 and §103 reference sets
Anticipation references where they exist; where they don't, a minimal combination with the motivation to combine articulated and sourced.
Priority-date verification
Every reference checked against the target's actual priority chain — not the filing date — including provisional support where the chain is contested.
Foreign and non-patent literature
CN, JP, KR, EP and WO art routed to English family members; journal, standards and conference literature with translations of the passages relied on.
Exclusion screening
Everything cited during prosecution identified up front, so you learn what is genuinely new art rather than what the examiner already considered.
A written search record
Classes searched, queries run, databases covered, and what was ruled out. If the search comes up short, you can see exactly where it looked.
The claim chart and the signed statement come with the signed searches; the preliminary sweeps carry the rest. See sample reports.
Method
Classification first. Keywords second.
Keyword search finds art that uses your vocabulary. The references that invalidate a patent usually describe the same structure in different words — a different industry, a different decade, a different language. Examiners find those through classification, and that is where the search starts.
Classification-anchored recall
CPC-scoped searching, with the class set seeded from the closest art actually found — which corrects for targets misclassified during prosecution.
Multiple independent sources
USPTO full text, Google Patents worldwide and EPO OPS for EP and WO; OpenAlex, Crossref, arXiv, Europe PMC, open-access full text, standards bodies and archived product literature.
Full-text reading, not abstracts
Candidates are read in their full description, because the limitation that matters is rarely in the abstract or the claims.
On AI, plainly
No citation in a report was invented by a language model.
Automation does real work in the pipeline — running queries across sources, ranking candidates, pulling full descriptions. It does not decide what is prior art.
Tested on suggesting relevant patent numbers, language models returned mostly documents that do not exist — plausible numbers, plausible titles, no such patent. So verification is built in: every reference is confirmed to exist, its priority date is pulled from the record, and its relied-upon text is read in the original before it reaches a chart.
If a reference is in your chart, it has been read. That is the standard.
Working together
Conflicts cleared first
Before any signed search is accepted, and never both sides of the same dispute.
NDA after the conflict check
We sign yours before anything confidential changes hands. The order form asks only for public facts.
Search and documentation only
We are searchers and analysts, not counsel, and do not render legal opinions on validity or infringement.
Your materials stay yours
Confidential material is never put through a third-party AI service. See the privacy page.
Multi-patent matters are quoted per patent with a volume reduction; if a contentions date needs it faster, say so early. The background of who searches is on About.
Your first search is free.
Pick a search on the order page — prices and turnaround side by side.
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