Video as a Prior Art

Video is being considered as a source of prior art for many inventions.

A patent infringement case: Diomed, INC. Vs AngioDynamics, INC. in 2006 alleging that,

The plaintiff, Diomed, INC. filed an infringing complaint on AngioDynamics, INC. and VSI, INC. for their patent U.S. Patent No. 6,398,777. But unfortunately both the defendants argued that the ‘777 patent was invalid because it was anticipated by means of the following prior art references,

Although the defendants submitted an evidence to invalidate the plaintiff’s ‘777 patent, Diomed, INC. proved that the patent is valid.

Considering the above case, it is evident that the oral description or video stream can be used as prior art.

Requirements of Patentability

Patentability requirements of an invention are novelty, useful and non-obvious.

Prior use of the invention in a public domain will make a patent application obvious as well spoil the novelty of the patent application.

So, in order to make sure that an invention is indeed novel and patentable, a thorough prior art search is a must. Any document disclosed to the public is a prior art – it need not be necessarily a patent document; it can be any piece of write-up published on internet, or, an article in a newspaper, a video published online etc.

According to MPEP 901.06, ‘All printed publications may be used as references, the date to be cited being the publication date’. Hence, a video can also be qualified as a printed publication considering its uploaded date as publication date.

To be a prior art,

• A reference video must have a published / uploaded date proof showing that, it is dated/publicly available before the filing date the patent application
• The video should contain one or more subject matter of the new invention and should be searchable by using keywords on the search engine
• Video must be viewed by number of people

However, the problem in reporting AV (audio visual) evidence for a patent application rejection is, the AV files can be removed from YouTube or any other public websites at any time. These are not permanently available and may be lost over period of time. Hence, it is mandatory to make a reference for future needs.

Format for preparing video evidenceIt is also important to be aware of patent law which considers the own videos of inventor’s and/or applicant’s.

One example is Apple Vs. Samsung and Google’s Motorola for infringement case on EP2059868  – Invalidated by prior video

Steve Jobs video clip

Effective Video Search Techniques

YouTube – one of the largest video sharing as well searchable website, which enables to effectively search videos

1. Using Boolean operators similar to Google operators
2. Using filters e.g. sorting the video search results by relevance or “upload date”
3. In various fields including technical matters, software and education

Google Video Advanced Search – more effective video search tool that

1. Has search tools/filters that enables searching using custom date range, captioned videos, any source etc.
2. Has language option which allows to search other language videos, also with machine translation for non-English videos

Other search engines like Yahoo, Zuula, Lycos and Dogpile can also be used.

It is highly recommended to hire patent search experts to hit the “novelty killer” prior art.

For high quality patent search deliverables, please contact us at:

email: info@dexpatent.com / Mobile: +91 822-000-7279.