United States: 6-Sigma Patent Data Quality Standards; Is the Needle even in the Haystack? Patent Searching on Poor Quality Patent Databases Misses Critical Documents

Andy Gibbs

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 5/6/2004)

At a time when patent infringement suits such as Eolas v. Microsoft can result in $1/2 Billion dollar awards, fast access to accurate patent data has reached peak demand. Finding a "Silver bullet" prior art patents can result in invalidity of the asserted patent, or it describes the technology another company is developing, it can stop R&D in its tracks, saving the company 10 of millions in waster R&D investment. Why is finding the "silver bullet" patent amongst more than 20 million issued patents so difficult? The answer is in two parts: a) inadequate search technology, and more importantly, b) poor patent data quality. What is 6-Sigma? More importantly, what is "quality patent data"?