Collaborative search and sensemaking of patents

Despite the large number of patent searches conducted by professional patent searchers and inventors, little is known about how such searches are actually performed. Here we describe a qualitative study of experienced patent searchers as they conducted in-context searches at a technology transfer office. Based on studies of expert search and sensemaking in other domains, we expected the professional searchers to (1) use well-formed search strategies that were effective for patent search, and (2) rapidly make sense of the novelty of an invention by constructing new representations to organize existing patents that appear relevant. Instead, we observed the searchers perform simplistic preliminary searches and then exchange their search process and results with inventors and patent lawyers to collaboratively make sense of the patentability and licensability of the invention. Furthermore, their sensemaking consisted of selecting known representations of patents to organize the new information, an approach we call "weak" sensemaking. These results suggest implications for designing systems that support the observed collaborative "weak" sensemaking with the goal of helping the users to more effectively determine the patentability and licensability of an invention.