USPTO Integrates New AI-Based Functionality With Examiner Search Tools

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently added a new artificial intelligence (AI)-based "Similarity Search" feature to the prior art search tools available to examiners. This Similarity Search feature is designed to be an enhanced replacement of the Patent Linguistic Utility Service (PLUS) search tool and provides examiners with optional new search capabilities to access prior art alongside traditional document retrieval approaches. The PLUS search tool received as input a keyword list generated from scanned portions of the Specification being searched and produced a list of only U.S. patents and published U.S. applications that most closely match the Specification. The new AI-based Similarity Search tool receives the full text of the Specification as input and outputs a list of both domestic and foreign patent documents that are similar to the Specification being searched. Further, an examiner can refine the AI-based Similarity Search queries by emphasizing certain Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) symbols and certain paragraphs, sentences, or words in a Specification to focus on specific concepts in the Specification being searched.