The spine patent researcher’s new best friend.

Ignorance may be bliss but it is also very expensive. Just ask any one of the estimated 17 spinal implant companies who were sued or filed lawsuits over their intellectual property. Of course, there’s the poster child of spinal implant litigation: Medtronic v. Michelson and its billion dollar settlement.

Patent infringement lawsuits aren’t just expensive; they can and will put companies out of business. Sadly, spine patent litigation is more and more standard business practice.

Until now, the state of the art in patent searches was ill equipped to help companies, lawyers, and other researchers in this increasingly litigious industry. Before PearlDiver, patent searches involved either subscribing to a patent search engine, searching public patent databases yourself (i.e., USPTO), or hiring a $600/hour patent attorney to do your searches for you. In the first two cases, you need to know what to search for and what key words to use. In the last case, you need to have accurate and understandable communication between the design engineers and the attorney.

The opportunity for error in any of these processes is reflected by the growing number of patent lawsuits. The current state of the art just isn’t good enough anymore.

This past month, I’ve had the opportunity to play with the most comprehensive and portable spine patent database on the market, the PearlDiver Spine IP Report (IP stands for Intellectual Property). PearlDiver delivered easier and faster access to spine patent information than anything I’ve ever worked with before.

It was a dream and it blew away anything out there today.

What makes PearlDiver so special? To begin with it is a database of over 5,800 US and Non-US spine patents. The patents are organized and sorted into 21 different spinal technology categories such as Dynamic Stabilization, Cervical Arthroplasty, or Facet Joints.

The system was extremely user friendly and I found that I could easily organize the patents into whatever categories I chose. The database is updated every quarter with the world’s spine patents in order to keep it current.

The spine patents in the database are selected via a proprietary search algorithm developed by Wade Fallen and MedicineLodge. If you ask Wade what their search algorithm is, he will say something like “This algorithm includes searches based upon patent classifications, assignees, and key inventors,” which makes sense if you have searched for patents before.

Having a database of patents is only half the story. In order to make it useful, PearlDiver comes bundled with the WizPatent Viewer software that allows me to search and view all of the data. (For a small license fee, I also get WizPatent Manager software which allows me to do my own sophisticated patent searches of the online public databases).

Good software has to be easy to use and WizPatent software was simply amazing. My first thought was that it looked a lot like my email software. I have my patent folders along the left hand side of the screen, a list of patents in the middle top part of the screen, and a viewer window below the list of patents. I simply select my folder along the left hand side, and the patents in that folder show up on the screen. I select a patent and the patent shows up in my viewer.

Figure 1 - Spine IP Report

Some of the key features include:

1. You can view both the text and the PDF (artwork) for the patents.
2. The ability to search the whole patent collection or just subsets of the collection.
3. Patents can be organized by category, inventor, assignee, date published, date issued, patent code (both US and international codes), or by your own criteria.
4. The ability to search through and select patents visually.
5. The ability to search through and select patents using refined text searches.
6. WizPatent software includes a sophisticated patent claim analysis function that will organize all independent and dependent claims into an easy to use “claim tree.”
7. Access to the database is fast. There is no waiting to download files from the internet; it’s all in the local database.
8. The database itself is stored on a portable storage device that will fit into the palm of your hand or into your shirt pocket and can be used anywhere you need to work.
9. WizPatent Manager includes a sophisticated online patent search engine.
   

Let’s look at some of the highlights. With a single click of my mouse, I can switch my patent view from the list of patents (shown in Figure 1 above) to a visual view of the patents (Figure 2 below). I can scroll through the pictures in the visual view and select my patents based upon their artwork.

Figure 2: Visual View of the Patents

If I want to look at the claims in a patent, I click the “Claim Tree” button and get a tree version of all the claims. This allows me to quickly walk through the independent and dependent claims in order and shows me their relationship with each other.

Figure 2 - Claim Tree View

Figure 3 - Group By Folder View

The Group By Folders windows organizes my patents so I can quickly answer market research questions such as, “Which companies hold the most patents for the Facet Joint?” I simply move my Facet Joint patent folder into my Group By Folders windows and it organizes my patents into several interesting and useful categories.

PearlDiver Spine IP Report is one of those disruptive products that can change the way a company does business.

Many companies evaluate patentability and freedom to operate later in the design process, often risking substantial investments in product development. Having Spine IP Report makes it practical and effective to do this at the very beginning of the design/ invention/ technology evaluation process. With this product, one becomes much faster at screening new ideas that otherwise might reinvent the wheel (i.e., determine patentability). With this product, one becomes much faster at screening technologies to make sure they don’t infringe other patents (i.e., freedom to operate). With this product, one can find relevant patents much, much faster than every before.

If you would like to get your hands on a demo version of this product, attend one of the free one-hour training sessions PearlDiver is holding over this next year. The first set of training sessions will be held in San Diego on February 14-15. You can sign up for the sessions at www.pearldiveronline.com and click the calendar page. That will list the locations of upcoming training classes and allow you to sign up for the session of your choice. If you would like to buy a subscription to the PearlDiver Spine IP database, you will have to wait until Valentine’s Day (February 14) when the product will be officially launched.

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