When advising clients on freedom to operate, having confidence in your search results is imperative. For intellectual property related to chemical substances, it is important to consider not only patents claiming specific substances, but also those covering generic chemical structures. Markush structures allow inventors to claim multiple substances by using variables at specific positions in the chemical structure to represent multiple chemical moieties. By omitting Markush structures from a substance search, you risk missing vital information. The MARPAT database is produced by CAS and contains more than 1.1 million searchable Markush structures from patents and patent applications from the early 1960s to the present. In this presentation we will discuss patent and claim coverage in MARPAT, the impact MARPAT and other Markush databases can have on patentability and validity/invalidity, and why MARPAT is key for confidently advising your clients on freedom to operate.

Importance of Markush searching for FTO purposes

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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