"Being creative with patents is easy and highly effective!". This affirmation may surprise many developers who believe that patents are "incomprehensible texts for experts only".

Yet patent language is a powerful development tool! Indeed, patent claims make it possible to delve into the depths of a technical solution as they ask potential inventors a key question:

"What new combinations of means are you proposing?"

Patent experts have thus invented an amazing language to provide protection… which is also a powerful language for development. Development, after all, consists in combining means to meet a need.

The problem is that developers have great difficulty understanding patent claims, which are complicated and often very lengthy sentences. However, if claims are translated into diagrams, called trees of means and ends, "patent language" becomes very clear for developers.

Developers can then use the global patents database, which groups together all the technical solutions created, in all fields, over more than two centuries… Why reinvent what already exists?

All the technical solutions one creates merely combine, in a new manner, means that can be found free of charge in the global patents database! So why not play with patents… using patent language!

One can use two approaches to be creative with patents:

• Replacement: replacing one means by another means, one relation between means by another relation...
• Transfer: identifying means and relations, used in other technical fields, and transfering them into one’s own technical field. Thus, thanks to the tree of means and ends, a graphic representation of patents, developers can now understand patents, play with them… and create new technical solutions!

Thus, thanks to the tree of means and ends, a graphic representation of patents, developers can now understand patents, play with them… and create new technical solutions!

Yann de Kermadecan from Groupe Julhiet Sterwen will be presenting this topic on day 1 of the conferences at PCD from 4.15pm. The presentation is "Me3.2 Patents: a means to stimulate creativity Yann de KERMADEC, Expert en management de l’innovation et de la propriété intellectuelle, Groupe Julhiet - Sterwen, France"

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