PQAI is an open-source prior-art search system that uses AI trained on patent data

How does the ‘Find Prior Art’ feature work?

This feature uses the open-source platform PQAI to retrieve prior-art for a given patent. PQAI uses an AI trained on patent citation data to search for prior-art beyond what was found by the examiner during prosecution.

When you request prior-art for a patent, PQAI uses its first claim as the search query. The claim is fed into a deep learning ranking system, which matches the query with all prior patents and ranks them from ‘most similar’ to ‘least similar’. A fixed number of patents from the top of the list is shown to you.

For more details about PQAI, please refer to the PQAI Website.

I want to find prior-art for a claim other than the first claim. How do I do that?

Locate the patent from the Search page, then open the patent in full view. Instead of clicking on the ‘Find Prior Art’ button right besides the patent title, expand the ‘Claims’ tab and click on the ‘Find prior art’ link just below your target claim.

What is qualified as prior-art by the ‘Find Prior Art’ feature?

The PQAI search system treats the queried patent’s filing date as the ‘cut-off’ date. Only documents published before this date will turn up in the search results, anything published afterwards is filtered out and ignored.

Why don’t I see the ‘Find Prior Art’ button on a patent?

Right now, PQAI search system only supports US patent inputs. Due to this, non-US patents will not show a ‘Find Prior Art’ button.

However, you can directly copy-paste a non-US patent’s claim into the search box on the Prior Art page. Please note that the claim must be in English.

Why are there exactly 50 results for each search?

The PQAI search system has been envisioned and designed to bring up the relevant art within tens of top hits. It is impractical for most searchers to go through 100s and 1000s of results. Therefore, if the relevant art does not turn up in top-50 results, the query (or the search system) needs refinement.

The prior-art I found by the ‘Find Prior Art’ button is not relevant. What to do?

This can happen for a number of reasons. The most likely cause is the vague and abstract language of the queried claim. Please try copy-pasting, then rephrasing the claim on the Prior Art page using more ‘natural language’ (example: replace ‘wireless communication device’ to ‘mobile phone’).

Please also note that for some technologies such as chemistry and mechanical engineering, the search results may not be very accurate. This is due to some current limitations of the search system’s capability. We encourage you to share your search experience by submitting your feedback on the search results. You can do this by giving a ‘star rating’ for any result on the Prior Art page.