State of the Art Searching Training Course

Learn when and how to perform a ‘state of the art’ patent search.

6 November 2025 »
from £599

Need help? Enrol/reserve

Format: Live online
CPD: 6 hours for your records
Certificate of completion

Course overview

This course will teach you the essential skills for conducting a comprehensive 'state of the art' patent search.

Our expert trainer will guide you through selecting the right content, putting together and executing an effective search strategy, and analysing and reporting your findings.

While the focus is on patent searching, the course also explores when and how to incorporate other technical literature into your state of the art review, depending on your specific field.

A state of the art search must be broader than a typical patentability search. You will learn how to balance recall and precision, ensuring relevance for optimal results. The course emphasizes practical techniques, including the use of patent classifications, patent citations, and name searching, to build a robust collection for an initial state of the art review.

Given that the state of the art is always evolving, the course will also cover how to stay up to date by setting up effective technology patent monitoring processes. This will ensure you remain informed about the latest advancements in your field.

This course is part of our collection of IP & Patents Training Courses.

Benefits of attending

By attending this course you will:

Expand your knowledge of the importance of State of the Art searching
Learn when to carry out the search and how to select the content
Get to grips with search techniques and how to analyse your results
Understand how to report your results
Clarify techniques to stay up to date with State of the Art

Who should attend?

This course is for all those working in IP or patent information or patent engineer roles, either in industry or legal businesses, and wanting to improve and / or update their search skills.

The course will be of particular interest to:

IP managers
Patent research specialists and analysts
Technology transfer officers
R&D and technical product managers
R&D scientists and engineers wanting to ensure they are not ‘re-inventing the wheel’
Sales and support professionals of commercial information providers

Enrol/reserve

This course will cover:

Content selection

Patents, NPL
Dates
Countries
Search
Database selection

Search techniques

Concept definitions, preparing the strategy, recording
IR theory
Relevance
Recall and precision
Broadening your search statements
Narrowing your search statements
Classifications
Citations
Name searching
For specific technical fields (chemistry, biotech, mechanical, devices, telecomms)

Analysing the results

Clean up
Categorisation / classification / bucketing

How to report your search results

Family counting
Identifying trends, pivotal patents, key players, emerging opportunities
Reporting styles

Maintain awareness of the state of the art

Setting up alerts
Reviewing and re-running the searches
Dissemination of the results

References for further study

Enrol/reserve

Jane List
Extract Information Limited

Jane List founded Extract Information Limited, Cambridgeshire, UK, in 2013 following a career in the information industry where she held commercial, content, and product development roles at Lighthouse IP, ProQuest, and DataStar. She has also held IP and Information analyst roles at The Technology Partnership plc, Xaar plc and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. Jane has provided training in the retrieval and analysis of scientific, technical, medical, commercial and patent information throughout her career. At Extract Information Jane searches patents for her clients and provides IP management support. Jane has qualifications in Chemistry, Information Science, and IP Law.

Jane has other roles in patent information field:

Editor in Chief of World Patent Information Journal, a leading journal in the field of patent information and IP management since 2014 https://www.journals.elsevier.com/world-patent-information.
Secretary of PatCom, the group of commercial patent information providers (www.patcom.org) since 2014.
In 2015 Jane List co-founded The Cambridge Information and Intellectual Property Meeting (www.CIIPM.co.uk) to provide a space for knowledge sharing for those involved with technology commercialisation and needing to understand more about IP and understand more about patent searching.

More details

NEW higher discounts for multiple bookings - bring your colleagues to make your training budget go further:

30% off the 2nd delegate*
40% off the 3rd delegate*
50% off the 4th delegate*

Please contact us for pricing if you are interested in booking 5 or more delegates

6 November 2025

Live online

09:00-17:00 UK (London) (UTC+00)
10:00-18:00 Paris (UTC+01)
04:00-12:00 New York (UTC-05)
Course code 15260

GBP 599 699
EUR 839 979
USD 963 1,119

Until 02 Oct

1 day live online training
Browser-based, no download usually required
See presenters and interact with fellow attendees
Download documentation and certification of completion
Fair transfer and cancellation policy

View basket

Not ready to book yet?

for 7 days, no obligation

* Early booking discounts may not be combined with other discounts or offers. As such, the discounts for 2nd/3rd/4th delegates are based on the full price; and apply only when booking multiple delegates on the same date.