Cost-effective patent research: The dynamic path to patent quality

What could justify another article about patentability searching? The decline in patent quality has resulted from the US Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) and other national patent offices’ lack of control or effectiveness in mandating the citation of the most relevant prior art during prosecution by the examiner or applicant before a patent is allowed.

The consensus is that patent reform has failed to adequately address this problem during patent procurement but relies on inter partes review (IPR) or national opposition challenges to define relevance of newly-identified references to decide the patentability and scope of claims issued to the patent owner.