Search Japan Patent for a Lithographic Method of Semiconductors

If in a patent infringement litigation or patent licensing, prior art that relates to lithographic method of a semiconductor is required, where and how the search can be performed?

The first and most important source to be searched is Japanese patent. Depending on the publication date of the prior art to be searched, Korean and/or Chinese prior art should also be included. If prior art published before 1995 is required, we suggest to focus on Japanese patent search.

If the target patent to be invalidated is about a semiconductor device with a 2-dimensional pattern, following search concepts may be used in the Japan patent search:

1) a semiconductor device having a first resist and a second resist, or a first pattern and a second pattern, and a manufacturing method thereof;
2) a manufacturing method for a semiconductor device comprising two or more than two times of exposures;
3) a manufacturing method for a semiconductor device comprising coating two or more than two resists.

In one of our previous searches for Japan prior art relating to a semiconductor and manufacturing method thereof, we used full text searches as well as classification searches. In these searches, a total of 1334 hits were generated. Full documents of these hits were downloaded, and each of these documents was screened and reviewed. 5 Japanese patent documents that are considered to be relevant art to the target patent to be invalidated were uncovered.

Tips and case studies of searching Japan patents relating to digital cameras:
How to Search Japanese Patents for Digital Cameras
Search Japan patents for Digital Cameras with unique parameter setting function
Search Japan patents for Digital Cameras with image rotation during display