Forward searching – A complement to keyword- and class-based patentability searches

•Known concept of forward searching in patentability searches is developed.•Benefits of combining forward searching with citation analysis are described.•Features that an ‘ideal’ search platform for these purposes should exhibit outlined.

Patent searches are commonly carried out using keyword- and/or class-based search strategies. The objective of this paper is to present a complementary technique to these traditional strategies – “forward searching”. Starting from a known and relevant document and looking at the documents citing this known document, – the “forward citations” – it is possible, by indexing these citing documents by time, author name or other bibliographical parameters, to retrieve more relevant documents. Forward searching here is further extended using citation analysis to find documents technically related to the known document. The benefits of forward searching and citation analysis, and the most convenient tools currently available online for implementing these techniques, are highlighted. Based on the advantages provided by these online tools, an attempt is made to show which attributes an “ideal” search platform should exhibit.