Invalidity Search Services

Finding the Art That Should Have Prevented the Grant

Invalidity searching is perhaps the most technically demanding service in IP research — because it requires not just finding prior art, but finding the specific art that defeats specific claims in a specific legal context (IPR, litigation, or licensing negotiation). The standard for a useful invalidity search is not "finding something in the right technology domain." It is finding § 102 art that individually anticipates every element of an independent claim, or § 103 combinations that render the claim obvious under KSR's flexible approach with articulable motivation to combine.

The prior art that defeats patents most effectively almost always comes from outside the patent's nominal technical domain. This is not accidental — it is a consequence of how patents are examined. Patent examiners search the same classification codes and keyword spaces as the patent drafter. Prior art that lives in adjacent domains, under different terminology, in non-patent literature, or in 3GPP standards documents is rarely found during examination. Our job is to find exactly this art — systematically, across domain boundaries, in the sources that matter.

KSR § 103 Cross-Domain Methodology

Every invalidity search we execute begins with functional claim decomposition — stripping claims to their underlying engineering functions before any database search. We then identify every technical domain where those functions have been implemented, construct explicit KSR motivation arguments for combining references across domains, and search systematically in each identified domain.

Deliverable

Annotated prior art references with element-by-element claim mapping; § 102 anticipation analysis for top references; § 103 combination grounds with explicit KSR motivation language; and a prosecution history review identifying prosecution disclaimer and file wrapper estoppel positions relevant to validity arguments.