Patent searching ain’t what it used to be

Abstract

There’s an old song that goes “The old grey mare, she ain’t what she used to be.” For a while I toyed with the idea of calling this talk ‘Patent Searching is an Old Grey Mare’, but fortunately the counsel of cooler heads prevailed. Hence the actual title. And why shouldn’t patent searching be very different from what it once was? The patent documents themselves have changed enormously. It’s only fitting that techniques for searching them have also been transformed.