News from China in Summer 2017

The public and private sectors have both invested heavily in recent years in the production of machine-searchable full texts of patent documents. Access to these databases enables even unskilled searchers to locate at least some relevant material for practically any search task. But full text provides only one viewpoint; there are circumstances in which neither the original text nor a machine translation provides sufficient keys to retrieve the best prior art. This article illustrates that comprehensive prior-art search results will only be obtained if the searcher understands the inherent quality (timeliness, accuracy, completeness) of the databases available, including any known weaknesses.