Dr Nigel Clarke, Visiting Fellow to the IIPM Lab is co-founder of the Patent Olympiad, which recently took place in Singapore at the IPOS IP Week. He has provided a short article below.
Image by N. Clarke. Nigel is all the way to the right.
By Nigel Clarke. (C) 2024
Patent searching is a profession. Patent searchers generally have backgrounds in science and technology but graduates in arts and law are also part of the community. Patent searching is part of the patent examiner´s job. Patent searchers work in dedicated private firms and consultancies, in industry, in public institutions, and in academia. You might think that patent searching would be rather specialised, solemn, serious. It’s a responsible job, with significant impacts.
However a group of us got together one evening at a patent information conference (where else?) after a few drinks and decided to create a unique event for patent searchers. An event that would be sociable, inclusive, informal, competitive and allow individual skills to be shown off. It would showcase the profession and above all it would be fun. Serious, but not solemn.
Patent Olympiad was founded in Atlanta Georgia in 2017. The first contest was in Milan in 2018, the second was in Bucharest in 2019. Then came COVID, pandemic and lockdown (you may have heard) but Patent Olympiad re-started in 2023, again in Milan.
The most recent Patent Olympiad contest took place in Singapore hosted by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) as an Associated Event of the international IPWeek, which was attended by more than 4500 participants
Patent Olympiad 2024 was sponsored by the World Intellectual Property Organization and a number of prominent commercial patent information search tool providers. The kick off was a networking getting-to-know-each-other evening in one of Singapore´s famed watering holes.
24 participants from Singapore, Japan, India, Vietnam, and Germany took part representing professional patent searchers from private practice, service providers, and industry, patent examiners, patent attorneys and agents, and students.
The contest is a triathlon, and the competitors need to have at least some of the skill sets of patent examiners, patent lawyers and patent paralegals. A tough ask!
(Confucius: Seek Not Every Quality In One Individual!)
In three hours under strict conditions a first challenge is to find prior art for a “dummy” patent application – which is paraphrased from a real expired patent – and find the citations that the original patent examiner found. Marks are awarded for each correct citation.
The second challenge is to create a search strategy to find prior art against a real invention. Marks are given for keywords, synonyms, classifications, and choice of Boolean operators
The third challenge is a set of really tough multiple choice questions of the form: “which is the correct publication number format for European Patent Specifications?” Marks are given for correct answers
The Judges´decision is final!
There are gold, silver and bronze level finalists – and they are awarded appropriate trophies in the form of hand-made souvenir glowing light bulbs and capes (not all superheroes wear them).
This year the gold went to Germany, silver to Japan and bronze to India, presented at a dedicated awards ceremony, winding up IPWeek in Singapore.
From the organisers´ perspective, Patent Olympiad 2024 was the best ever so far, given the backdrop of a world class IP event. It will be a hard act to follow, but planning for Patent Olympiad 2025 has already started.