Patents Are Stifling Innovation - Really?

The conversation starts the usual way. Business owner comes in to talk about a patent predicament. Usually with a cease and desist letter in hand, the business owner has discovered that there is a patent out there that covers some feature of their product or service and the business owner is mad. This patent is "stifling innovation." Or to quote Kent Walker General Counsel of Google on Google's own patent predicament, "patents are Gumming up innovation."

The mandatory non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements are signed before the real conversation begins. The business owner never looked into patents when they started their new internet or software juggernaut. Patents are boring and hard to read. The process of building the company was hard enough, there was no time to dig into patents, there were products to release, investors to find, customers to sell to, accountants to meet, Tweets to write, conferences to go to. Now the business owner is mad that some "troll" is coming along and trying to extort money from their hard work. Oh, and here's a copy of my EULA that has language protecting the company's intellectual property. Make this go away. Then comes the phrase I always wait for, "THIS ISN'T FAIR."

Let the hunt begin - that quest for prior art that will kill off the patent that has become the fly in the ointment of business growth, the patent that is stifling innovation.

If you want to hear how this conversation usually goes down across the intellectual property landscape, the check out the latest podcast at This Is My Next. At around the 50 minute mark the conversation turns to patents, Google's pouting about how it's not fair that the guys who own patents are coming after Android and the rest of the technology patent wars. Joshua Topolsky and Nilay Patel go at it. Imagine Joshua Topolsky as the disgruntled business owner and Nilay Patel as the patent attorney (he really is a patent attorney) reasoning with his client. It's an anecdote to all the patents are terrible patents are stifling innovation vitriol out there. The patent spat is enlightening and rest of the podcast is worth a listen too.

Science of Life - Ayurveda

We recently released our Life Sciences index which holds all of the concepts and ideas contained in over 800,000 US patents in the life sciences domain. While our index covers concepts beginning in the 70s right into the current century, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a life sciences repository that covers discovers in life sciences over thousands of years -- the Science of Life - the Indian art and science of Ayurveda. Ayuh and Veda which literally mean Science of Life.

The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR)'s Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy, part of the Indian Government, is compiling a massive database of of traditional medicines and ancient remedies that it wants to protect from being patented in other countries. The goal is to protect the collective traditional knowledge of India by making it available to patent examiners around the world in a way that is accessible and usable.

The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) contains information on Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha, and Yoga. It contains over 1200 formulations including 500 representative Ayurveda formulations, 500 Unani formulations and 200 Siddha formulations all linked to the International Patent Classification system (IPC). It includes easy to understand information how the compounds are formulated, what the treatment is useful for and the dosage information. It also contains a list of prior art documents ad the dates of publication.

Information in the TKDL has been successfully used as prior art to force the withdrawal of patent applications using traditional formulations. The formulations sections contain the Title of the Traditional Knowledge Resource and "Knowledge Since" information which has entries with listings citing 1000 years. Now that's some prior art.

For those of you who are classification junkies the TKDL has identified approximately 200 subgroups on medicinal plants where they recommend the TKDL be linked to to aid patent examiners in looking for prior art that relates to India's traditional knowledge. To see the list click here.

Among their more recent achievements is documenting over 900 yoga poses to block entrepreneurs from getting yoga-related patents. Yoga has been around for over 6,000 years embodying both a physical and spiritual practice. Yoga has grown into a $250 billion industry.

This is not just trendy news from the world of Yoga. Not news from Lululemon, home of yoga inspired clothing for healthy living and whose stock is heading off the charts and not news from the Facebook group called Yoga Pants, with over 78,000 people who clicked like (my guess is mostly guys but I digress...) but the work of scholars, yoga gurus, and experts have been documenting over 900 yoga poses in ancient Sanskrit texts.

This is an awesome resource for researchers. We're going to use some of the text of the formulas in our Life Sciences index and see what comes up. We expect it will be an interesting intersection of digital life sciences and the digital science of life. Stay tuned.

So You Think You Have a Patent...

In our installments of “Business Method Monday”, Mike and I outlined issues we have seen that patent applicants should consider as they create their applications, work with their patent agents and attorneys, and help insure that their patent is valid particularly where there is capital development in process, or where an inventor is protecting a revenue stream from a product or services, a license agreement, or royalties for the use of the patented technology.

A quick review…each claim must be classified based on the subject matter it discloses. Each claim is assigned to a specific Class and Subclass in the US Patent Classification system based on where that subject matter resides. A single claim may have additional subject matter claimed that is outside of the primary classification subclass array and is lower in the Class Schedule. It should have cross-reference listings of any Subclasses that applies. The same Claim may disclose detail that is outside of the Primary Class altogether, which should have additional cross-reference listings of all Classes and Subclasses where that subject matter resides. Please note that according to the USPTO classification guidelines, a Primary classification must come from “Claimed” subject matter and the same rule applies to what are know as Mandatory classifications. Discretionary classifications can optionally be assigned for subject matter that is disclosed in the Abstract, the Claims or that is disclosed in the description detail that follows the Claims, that the Examiner thinks may be important for future search activity.

Once the determination of where the Claimed subject matter resides is complete, the Examiner doing a diligent prior art search must search each of those Class/Subclass areas for art that invalidates any part of, or all of the Claimed subject matter.

Areas the Examiner searched during the examination are listed after the “Field of Search” heading on your Patent. This list includes Class/Subclasses searched, and may also include references to the documents searched.

We are going to look at two example Patents. The first is 6,108,637, issued on August 22, 2000, as a Primary in 705/7 and crosses to 705/30; 707/10; 714/E11.189; 715/207; 715/234. The Field of Search listed is 705/1, 7, 8, 9, 30; 706/11; 707/10, 200, 202, 512, 204, 526 395/200.54, 200.53, 200.59, 712,182.04, 675, 200.79, 200.47. There is no business method claimed, nor any 705/7 business operational analysis claimed. In this particular case, it appears that the 705 classification was based on the Abstract or the Disclosed detail, rather than the Claims detail and at best the 705/7 classification should be a Discretionary classification only. What is actually claimed is monitoring the position of a content display on a display screen, evaluating the position of the content and determining the total duration of time that the content display is hidden by the one or more images. That is not the limit of what is claimed, but the subject matter belongs in various Subclasses in Class 715 and in some cases in Class 709, which based on the Field of Search history, appears not to have been searched by the Examiner. In addition, Class 345 should absolutely have been searched.

The next Patent is 7,313,532, issued as a Primary in 705/7 on December 25, 2007, with a Field of Search listing only 705/7. What is actually claimed is 705/8 and 705/10 subject matter, resource allocation from an inventory system and market analysis of sales data, specifically, determining the most profitable distribution policy for a single period inventory system, based on historical sales data for an item to forecasting the mean demand for said item, which is applied in various claims, to initiates the allocation procedure from the optimal draw, and in other claims, determining optimal stock level draw for the most profitable distribution policy for a sales target. Again, it appears that no search was conducted by the Examiner in 705/8 and 705/10 where the claimed subject matter actually resides.

I did some brief searches using the Coronado Cognition IP search engine and pretty quickly found prior art that would demand close reading as is remarkably similar to these patents. In the case of 7,313,532, two patents that came up were 5,884,300, issued on March 16, 1999 and 7,039,479, issued on May 2, 2006 that are of interest. Time was limited, so I did not continue the search, nor did I look at published Applications, but based on subject matter I seem to remember seeing there, I suspect there are others published documents that could be of concern.

In coming installments I'll address some "patent prevention issues" -- techniques that can lead to a novel invention never seeing the light of day as a patent:

• Intentionally extremely vague or someone appears to want the claims to be very broad.
• Applications where it appears that someone other than the applicant was writing the claims and did not really understand what the invention was.

Until then, Sean

Dick Tracy Watch Gets FCC Approval

Gizmo Alert!! According to CNET the FCC has approved LG's Dick Tracy watch. CNET watches the FCC database to stay on top of what's next. I wonder can you use a cartoon as prior art?

The LG GD910 certainly meets the Gizmo test.

• Tempered glass, and high-quality metal casing construction
• 1.43" diagonal face measurement, by about .5" thickness
• LG's flash interface featuring touch-screen input
• Voice recognition, and text to speech so it can "read out" text messages
• Bluetooth connectivity
• Three side-mounted buttons
• A speakerphone
• A full-blown MP3 music player
• Water resistant design
• 7.2 Mbps 3G HSDPA compatibility, enabling high-speed data transmission and video calls using the built-in camera

The TV is missing but since it supports video calls, it looks likeit has it all. Chester Gould and Al Gross were ahead of their time. Check out the Chester Gould Dick Tracy Museum.

Clocks, Watches, and Beepwear

We are on the hunt for the Dick Tracy watch slogging through the inventions in the mobile phone, new technology, wireless and now wristwatch world. Today we keep our neon clock company we bring you Clocks, Watches and Beepwear.

Attempts to search for information on inventions is fraught with frustration. The Dick Tracy watch is more fun but not any different than any other electronics information hunt. Figuring out what the right words are to describe this type of invention requires some serious thought. They you have to figure out what class PTO has stashed the relevant inventions (art) under, and then figuring out if what you find is really what you are looking for. This is clearly a convergence issue. This is why we HATE all forms of keyword and Boolean searching. It is one of the most frustrating and unfulfilling experiences in the hunt for good information. The world of patents has its own kind of intellectual hide and seek. Inventors who try to pick terms that give you the broadest possible coverage of your new invention. Use works that make your invention seem new so it won't be declared obvious. Then pick some verbs that cover a lot of ground so that as technology morphs they can say, "Yeah, my invention does that..."

The Dick Tracy watch provides some excellent info hide and seek adventures. Dick Tracey's original two way radio watch came about when Dick Tracy's creator, cartoonist Chester Gould, met Al Gross, an inventor and engineer who has many wireless devices to his credit. After a 1946 meeting, Dick Tracy started wearing his iconic two way radio watch. What a good excuse to read old comics, "I'm looking for prior art honey..."

What does one call the Dick Tracy watch when you are on a technology hunt? You look for the terms that show up in patents that describe wrist mounted apparatus that provide continuous data feeds of local and other geographically disbursed location time data -- aka the wristwatch potentially with two faces. What words do you add to include the fact that this one communicates? How about one with a display, was it digital, sure looks that way, and square too.

Here are a some of the good descriptions we came across:

• Wrist instruments including timekeeping devices (Note: wrist instrument...sounds expensive)

• Improved wristwatch radiotelephone - (We didn't find the original wristwatch radiotelephone to go with this improved invention.)
  

• Personal digital apparatus..a wristwatch-type device with sensors (Note: could be a sports monitor)

• Battery powered communication device (Note: could be anything - walky talky? But you gotta go down the path)

• Personal digital assistant watch - (Note: good but no communications implied by this description)
  

• A programmable portable information device (PDAs, cellphones, electronic roledex device?)

• A portable timekeeping device (Note: Could be a cellphone or a battery powered clock that you tote around with you when you travel, or what about the clock in your car? What about a stop watch?)

• A portable information device such as a multifunction electronic wristwatch

US Patent 3032651 is one of the earliest Wrist Carried Radio Set. This "wrist carried radio" was invented by two Swiss inventors and actually cites a Janauary 20, 1946 article from the Richmond Times Dispatch titled, "Dick Tracy Wrist Radio" as prior art. It also cites a 1954 article from the Washington Star entitled, "The Army's New Wrist Radio." It has some very elegant drawings. This application must have been written shortly after the press documented the meeting between Mr. Gross and Mr. Gould.

Timex and Motorola have a series of overlapping intellectual property which resulted in the Beepwear watch. The Beepwear pager watch was a hit at the Beepwear Pro was promoted as, "It's a pager, ...it's a watch, ....it's an organizer,....right on your wrist! "

Timex's US Patent 4847818 filed in 1988 by Timex is one of the earlier inventions. It has a remarkably simple title: Wristwatch Radiotelephone offering a different phone configuration than the standard Dick Tracy:
There are Timex patents with Microsoft as well, see 5922058.

Ericsson defines their invention as a personal information management system. (That's nice and broad) US Patent 6334046 describes a personal information management system that includes a personal information manager having a first transceiver and a first storage device for personal information and a communication system. Could be Dick Tracy in silhouette in their figures.

IBM has a patent for a PDA watch with features that take advantage of the flexibility of the human wrist to enhance data entry. It describes the field of invention as "relating in general to information processing apparatuses, and in particular to personal data assistants."

HP's 7055111 is for "Opportunistic Data Transfer From a Personal Digital Apparatus". In case you are wondering, Opportunistic Data Transfer appears to relate to the capability to download data to your personal digital assistant at a predetermined time. The Personal Digital Apparatus covers a lot of territory. The personal digital apparatus appears to be hooked to the arm according to the figures and preferred embodiment but they wander into the medical data arena - is that the same as the devices that keep track of your work out and upload the data to your personal computer (whatever that is these days?) This one has lots of Bluetooth compliant device language.

The LG "Dick Tracy watch" was shown at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show. Samsung has its own version that lets you check voice mail and check Outlook mail. I guess we'll have to see what RIM and Apple do next.

The best description of this class of devices so far is simply, "An attention grabbing gizmo."

That explains it.

Celebrity Watch - Information Edition

For those of you who, from time to time, engage in a little electronic celebrity stalking we bring your Celebrity Watch Information Edition. We suggest you try the FBI's Electronic Freedom of Information Acts (EFOIA) electronic reading room.

The FBI's electronic reading room is where the FBI posts frequently requested information sought under the Freedom of Information Act. For you celebrity stalkers, the reading room features the links to the files they have assembled on "Famous People". Its luminaries include Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Desi Arnez, John Lennon, and Gene Autry among others. Malcolm X is listed as "Little, Malcolm X." There are files on Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Dr. Martin Luther King, and John Steinbeck.

If you are looking for additional entertainment, check out the Unusual Phenomena listings for Project Blue Book, their investigation into UFOs, and, Animal Mutations. (Perhaps concern about discovering exactly when pigs would fly.)

For a while, the Elvis file was the most frequent FOIA subject in the entire Federal Government. The FBI saved a lot of money when it posted the file online rather then sending out hard copies to people FOIAing his record.

Electronic reading rooms and FOIA are the gateways to amazing amounts of scientific and technical information. Most federal agencies have electronic reading rooms on their website that include most frequently requested information and the actual EFOIA form. A well written FOIA request can be the gateway to tracking down high quality prior art and inventive activity information.

Photomosaic Images, and Excellent Prior Art

We have come to love the art of excellent prior art. Finding really good prior art is one of those serendipitous search moments. Just doing a prior art search makes you smarter but when you find an elegant, amazing piece of prior art it's great. The best prior art quests tend to be part of invalidity efforts with big money, big principles, or both at stake. The one we discuss here is a big principle example.

A refresher on what USPTO says about prior art:

Under 35 U.S.C. 102(b) states: "A person shall be entitled to a patent unless -- (b) the invention was patented or disclosed in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of application for patent in the United States."

Excellent prior art was found by the people at Public Patent (PubPat) Foundation at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law; a not-for-profit legal services organization whose mission is to protect freedom in the patent system. PubPat.org says that they represent the public's interest against undeserved patents and unsound patent policy. We are nonpartisan about their mission but impressed by their finely honed prior art skills.

In September of 2008, Pubpat asked USPTO to re-examine a patent for photomosaic images (6,137,498) The patent was filed in October 27, 1997 based on a provisional application dated January 2, 1997. The patent was granted in October 24, 2000. The reexamination appears to have triggered when the inventor, Robert Silvers of Cambridge, Mass. was sending cease and desist letters and asserting his patent against individuals, small businesses, and against the GIMP open source software program. On June 11th, 2009, PubPat received a copy of the USPTO Office Action invalidating 41 of the 63 claims including all of the independent claims. While the fight isn't totally over, this was a major victory.

What was the primary piece of prior art cited in the USPTO Office Action? The cover of the "Being Double Digital, The Media Lab at 10" November 1995 issue of WIRED magazine. The cover featured a photomosaic portrait of Nicolas Negroponte. This piece of prior art was actually created by Mr. Silvers himself. A piece of art previously submitted to USPTO.

To add to the sublime nature of this particular piece of prior art is the fact that Mr. Silvers' bio cites the Media Lab under his educational credits. Mr. Silvers published a paper titled "Mosaics: Putting Pictures in their Place". The paper was submitted to the Program in Media Arts and Sciences, School of Architecture and Planning as part of the requirements for a Degree of Master of Science in Media Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) That paper, published in 1996. The document itself states "In 1994, he entered the Media Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. The very institution that the WIRED magazine profiled in the November 1995 issue that was used to invalidate Mr. Silver's patent. It's interesting that Mr. Silver's own work is not cited on the patent document.

Mr. Silver passes the patent number test. Mr. Silvers' web site includes his patent number on the bottom of every page. Perhaps Mr. Silver will need to modify his website now.

Netflix New Patent, & Intellectual Vertigo

On Tuesday we learned about the latest patent from Netflix courtesy of Aaron Feigelson's blog 12:01 Tuesday. 12:01 Tuesday is the time each week that the Patent and Trademark Office issues the electronic gazette that publishes all of the newly granted patents.

Mr. Feigelson post provided insight into the origin of Netflix -- it's founder Reed Hastings started Netflix after paying a $40 late fee to Blockbuster eleven years ago. It's only five years? That's what Mr. Feigleson thought too. He then provided an insightful analysis of the new patent Netflix -- "Approach for managing rental items across a plurality of distribution locations", patent number 7,546,252.

The comments we found most interesting were:

"What do we make of the Examiner’s statement in the Notice of Allowability:

“Applicant’s voluminous IDS received August 28, 2008 has been given a cursory review.”

"Should an accused infringer need to present clear & convincing evidence to show invalidity in this situation where the Examiner essentially admits he did not read the references?"

A cursory review?? They had this thing for six years even if the IDS only came in in 2008. Ah, but it's bad to jump to conclusions with our doing a little work of your own. So, we did.

Since we specialize in all manner of technology for searching and researching intellectual property matters, we decided to see for ourselves. It was a nice Friday afternoon so we decided to spend a little time on it.

We read the claims. Eighty seven total claims, 6 independent claims, 81 dependent leading to intellectual vertigo. So many permutations we couldn't keep them straight.

This lead us to ask our own interesting question: How hard would it be to find all these references if you had to start from scratch; would it have been so hard for the examiner to read the references. So we spent a few minutes seeing what we were up against.

We started with the 58 patent prior art references including my personal favorite 6,334,127,

System, method and article of manufacture for making serendipity-weighted recommendations to a user. How can you not like something dealing with serendipitous recommendations? This one has 67 claims and its own voluminous set of patent and non-patent prior art citations. A cacophony of art across a broad spectrum of subject matter.

The application portfolio from inventor John N. Gross was interesting. Since these were PGPubs we couldn't figure out if he was an independent inventor or worked with another firm. We didn't look that hard though.

First we downloaded the File Wrapper -- it's huge. Too much to deal with for a casual Friday exercise. We'll extract it and figure out what's in there next week. None of the non-patent prior art was there though.

Then we started tooling around and tried to get to some of the prior art references gathered from the internet. This should be somewhat fruitful we thought. Not so. The very first one produced the following dead end as did many others revealing variations on the Not Found message.

Then there was a link that led to a one page reference to a library circulation system that cites how books are selected by computer based on the reader's grade. The link worked this time. It produced a silly reference but one that, if it wasn't their, might prove troublesome if someone tried to claim that Netflix' approach was like the process of stocking a book mobile.

There are two references from publications that are almost impossible to find:

Anonymous, Untitled, Press Release, Business Wire, Apr. 27, 1999, 1 page. cited by other .
Anonymous, Untitled, Press Release, The Washington Post, Apr. 24, 1999, 1 page. cited by other.

We look forward to reading the entire issue of the April 24th Washington Post looking to find the Anonymous Untitled Press Release that has something to do with inventory management, renting movies, taking books out of the library with the aid of a computer. This ought to cost a bundle if anyone tried to challenge the patent unless they are prepared to wonder to Alexandria to read the file itself.

Imagine if this application was submitted under the new proposed rules on claims. The enhanced information disclosure would be encyclopedic. Or maybe it would have been a deterent. Hard to tell at this point.

After this exercise, I started to feel bad for the examiner. I wonder it the examiner was overtaken by the urge to heave the whole file out the window? I wonder if the examiner figured, let these guys duke it out in the marketplace. USPTO has had this thing for years and if I don't get it off my docket I'm never going to hear the end of it. Maybe the use of the word approach was enough for the examiner to say, maybe Bilski will take care of this eventually. Maybe it was a nice Friday and the examiner decided enough, I'm done for the day.

Either way, the whole exercise was intellectual property, intellectual vertigo.

Painful Patents

On Monday, May 11th, Greg Aharonian of Internet Patent News Service reported the following:                                

"NO GERMAN PATENT FOR A SAUDI KILLER CHIP"

"Newswires report that the German Patent Office last Friday rejected a patent application from a Saudi inventor which tried to claim implanting semiconductors under the skins of visitors and remotely killing them if they misbehave.  The chip would allow GPS tracking to prevent immigrants from overstaying, with some chips containing cyanide to be released by remote control to "eliminate" people if they become a security risk."

Gruesome...

But during a recent search focused on wearable technology we found US Patent 3,885,576. Inventor Eliot Symmes's 1975 patent, "Wrist Band Including a Mercury Switch To Induce an Electric Shock" discloses, "a wrist band including a normally open mercury switch is worn by a person so that when the  person raises his arm to put a cigarette to is lips...the mercury switch closes to connect a source of power ad induce an electrical shock in the person in order to deter the person from smoking, drinking or the like."

Ouch... 

Peer Review in the Digital World

We had a conversation with some of the leading diagnostic imaging informatics experts,the leading experts and practicioners in the field; people who understand how to read the CT scan, the MRI, the Xray, the Mammogram. We asked them what they thought about search and looking for important information on the web. They told us that one of the problems they have when they search the web looking for medical research and other clinical and diagnostic information is that they don't have confidence in the results. They get blogs, opinion, and other unreliable information that they don't feel they can use to make decisions on behalf of their patients. The Drs. have to evaluate the reliability of the information that pops up on their search results list and they are not happy with what they find with a search of the web.

The Drs. still don't have the same level of confidence in what they find on the web as what they have when they find and read the peer reviewed journals that report on Radiology and the amazing imaging views that they use to diagnose disease and to improve the outcome for their patients. They need the experts, they need to know that the information they find is reliable; they need to know the credentials of the people who are publishing their findings and opinions. What they want is the a tool to help them make a judgement on the reliability of the content of the results of their search. After all, real people with real health issues are counting on them. They need to understand the authority of the information that they review.

So we talked about "bibilometrics", the study of written documents and their citations; bibliometrics uses citations to produce a quantitative and qualitative estimate of the importance of and impact of scientific research papers, journals and analytical analyses to results of their search. In short, they need a way to determine the merit of the work before they use it to help them in their decision making process.

We talked about creating a way to use the citations on these writing to build an way to evaluate the work and add weight to the important and authority of works when you search. Thesesame techniques have been used to find important patents, to find "important patents" based on how many times a work is cited by other inventors. To determine which new patents are going to be important.

So, we went to the drawing board to build an electronic equivalent of the peer review system based on the content of the citations, the organizations that published the work, the credentials of the authors, and the frequency of citations on published articles to help searchers find the woks that are most important. We are building the social network of the researchers so that these experts can connect with each other and leverage their important work. Stay tuned.

Keyword Guessing Machine

An invention can’t be described in the 10 words supported by the leading internet search engines. Is a series of words and a few “ands”, and “ors” enough to describe the state of the art in any technology?   How do you find the terms to describe innovations over a 20 or 30 year time horizon?  What words do you need to know to get good results?  For most intellectual property research activities, conventional search becomes a Keyword Guessing Machine. 

The Keyword Guessing Machine takes you down the tedious path from one search to the next, keyword to keyword, combining keywords with Boolean operators, ands, ors, and nots, to try to find the right art.  The quality of the results is contingent on the searcher’s understanding of the keywords and vocabulary associated with the art.  A series of   Boolean operators are needed to build searches that define complex ideas. 

Searches are complicated by the need to look across time and address a constantly evolving vocabulary used to describe inventive art.   Keyword and full text searching do not compensate for the evolution in the lexicon used to describe a field of research and often have limited mechanisms to understand all of the concepts embodied by a single term. Researchers need to execute multiple queries using the vocabulary of the era or weed out search results that contain the same words but don’t embody the right concept. 

Conventional search dilutes the power of the terms and its underlying concepts. Associations become overused losing important related concepts or the meaning of search words over time.  

Search paralysis sets in when combinations of words yield no new or usable results.  Users then start again with a new set of terms.  The more novel or complex the idea, the harder it is to get meaningful results or to follow a thread of subject matter the way an inventor, attorney, or patent professional thinks about and defines their art.

If you look at the May 6th posting for the original Cybercash electronic commerce patent, it's hard to imagine that meaningful prior art could be found using the search terms defined by the examiner or that a researcher would know the right combination of words to find the appropriate art.  Keyword searching when looking for prior art if difficult, time consuming, and very frustrating.
 

Search Can Get Ugly

Part of the Examiner's search request for Patent Number  6,092,053 now owned by Paypal, Inc.

The invention is described as:

A system and method for merchant invoked electronic commerce allowing consumers to purchase items over a network and merchants to receive payment information relating to the purchases. The system includes a server having software which gathers the purchasing information from a consumer to complete a purchasing transaction over a network. The system has a consumer data structure that stores purchasing information for registered consumers. The software is able to access the consumer data structure and enter the consumer's purchasing information during subsequent purchases. Having the software obtain and enter the consumer's purchasing information, the consumer does not have to enter the same information every time they purchase an item over the network. In alternate embodiments, the same technology can be applied to other arenas where a user may have to enter the same repetitive information.

A Fundamental Intellectual Property Challenge

Digital scientific literature is accelerating inventive activity and faster development of emerging technology.

There aren’t enough Subject Matter Experts to find prior art for new and emerging technology.

A new search paradigm is needed to support expansion of inventive activity.