How AI Helps Cut Your Costs – but not your Confidence – During Due Diligence

Patents do not have a uniform taxonomy or nomenclature of technical terms. It is not as simple as asking the USPTO whether your product infringes on that of your competitors. Instead, it is necessary to search the patent database of every country where you currently (or may someday) do business, for any patent that might be relevant to the company that you are acquiring.

For a small team on a budget or deadline, keyword searches are not sufficient to accomplish this. Even with technical expertise in the subject, you may not know of every synonym to search. Using machine learning (ML) or AI is essential to identify all potentially relevant patents and assess the risk they pose. Combining human expertise with ML or AI is an effective recipe for balancing thoroughness, speed and budget. A variety of patent research databases and software tools are available for this type of analysis, and they are becoming more accessible for lawyers every day.

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