“Nothing new under the sun”; do we need new searching protocols to establish the patentability of industry 4.0 inventions?

Abstract

Efficient patentability searching demands that the searcher has the ability to identify efficiently the best sources of likely prior art for each invention being searched. This applies both within industry, at the point of drafting a patent application, and within patent offices conducting searches to support substantive examination. Industry 4.0 inventions are characterised by a particular nature and combination of technologies, notably the inclusion of aspects of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The default information sources currently used to establish patentability of ‘conventional’ inventions may be inappropriate for this new class of invention. This is partly due to the different structures of publication and methods of dissemination of research results found within computer science professions. It is suggested that searching in the secondary or tertiary literature may be a more fruitful approach to establish patentability in these areas of technology. However, expertise in the use of these types of source has been substantially lost, as the information industry has concentrated on production of full-text primary sources. Database production, database usage and search protocols all need to be reassessed if they are to meet the challenges of searching Industry 4.0 inventions.