What does a Patent Examiner or Patent Searcher do?

Patent examiners review patent applications to determine whether the claimed invention should be granted a patent. The work of a patent examiner usually includes searching patents and scientific literature databases for prior art, and examining patent applications substantively by examining whether the claimed invention meets the patentability requirements such as novelty, inventive step or non-obviousness, industrial application and sufficiency of disclosure. A Patent Searcher searches existing or publicly available information to determine whether an invention is new (novel) and whether persons with ordinary skill in the field could have deduced it (“non obvious”). A patent search usually begins with a review of previously issued patents, and progresses to other types of documents, such as journal articles and scientific papers describing unpatented inventions.

What skills are required?

Patent searching requires a high emphasis on a range of specific personal qualities and skills:

• Accuracy. Any patent searcher should be capable of delivering accurate work,  as the job of the patent searcher commands a high degree of commercial responsibility, as substantial financial decisions are likely to be made on the basis of the results that the searcher produces.


• Numeracy. A search specialist needs to handle numbers confidently. Commercial searchers may need to interpret profit and loss figures from a company database and should be capable of critically handling numerical data.


• Attention to detail. Searchers are usually required to spend time comparing their query with the answers found to determine whether they match – or they may have to compare large numbers of documents one against another to discern trends in research procedures from the competition.


• Query Definition Skills. Any searcher must develop the ability to extract from customers all the relevant details in order to help them in their search work. They need to exhibit a high degree of lateral thinking because their clients (however skilled they may be in other business areas) will often be mistaken about patents and what they can or cannot do.