#prior-art

#prior-art

Patents are notoriously difficult to search for, but Perplexity has launched an AI-powered tool that's supposed to make the process a little easier. Its new patent research agent allows you to search for patents using natural language, rather than a string of keywords. As an example, Perplexity says you can enter something like, "Are there any patents on AI language learning?" or "Key quantum computing patents since 2024," and Perplexity will return relevant results, along with AI-generated summaries of each one.

One of our arguments was that private sales-sales in which the invention has not been put into public use or led to the creation of some other type of prior art-should not provide the seller with a safe harbor against prior art under post-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)(1)(B), because a private sale by itself does not "publicly disclose" the invention per the terms of the statute.

The fact that patents subjected to an inter partes review (IPR) are "specially selected" is the very reason that this class of patents are a suitable vehicle for studying the cited evidence. The actual evidence cited is what determines "the underlying actual quality of issued patents." Understanding how patent information evidence is missed during examination will identify the root cause of examination errors, both allowance errors and rejection errors.