Type of Search: Invalidation search, to search Japanese prior art to invalidate a Europe patent

Field of Technology: Pharmaceutical/biotechnology

Brief Description of the Target Patent to be Invalidated: The invention disclosed in the target patent relates to the manufacturing of a physiologically active protein by culturing transformed animal cells. The target patent was filed in Oct. 1998, with a priority date of Apr. 1997.

Search Strategy: Search both Japanese patents and non-patent literature. Considering the physiologically active protein in the target patent is a very unique protein that has well defined terminology in Japanese, and our preliminary search using these terminologies generated about 2500 hits, we decided to use full text search with a few sets of Japanese key word string combinations.

Result: Uncovered 5 Japanese patent documents that are considered to be relevant art. Out of the 5 Japanese prior art uncovered, one document was particularly pertinent, which anticipates the claims of the target patent.