Considerations, challenges and methodologies for implementing best practices in patent office and like patent information departments

Patent information plays a key role for corporations and all the institutions involved in technological activities. But patent information is a very “labile” resource and requires a very professional approach based on sound management for being handled properly and used efficiently. This article focuses initially on the characteristics of patent information, bringing together some key statistics over the last 20 years. Then it deals with the management of patent information, the basic content of a policy to be defined and implemented, and finally with the key elements of best practice. The best practice analysis, applied to novelty searches performed in a patent office, covers the nature of data, the coverage of data and databases (e.g. geography and languages), and the functionalities of the tools (e.g. search engines, navigation tools). Finally, a model methodology of search strategy is presented.