<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote"><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>I was indeed mentioning a project I'm working on creating a set of
metadata to describe hardware projects ... but I wonder what is harder, a
useable meta tagging scheme or good image recognition that would lead
to linked documentation.<br><br></div></div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div>And regarding a database of "pior art" ... this already exists as defensive publication is indeed an IP strategy that some companies use. SeeĀ <a href="https://www.patexia.com/defensive_publication.html" target="_blank">https://www.patexia.com/defensive_publication.html</a> for instance</div><span class=""><font color="#888888"><div><br></div></font></span></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>You don't need image recognition, I think. I really know very little about the subject, but I do know that national patent offices conduct searches from different sources: technical publications, scientific journals, and others. The first and most important is their current patent database, which would mean that they simply analyze a catalogued database. I know there are two systems of classification: the IPC and CPC. Regarding the type of invention, the office will simply search for records depending on the clasification (according to the claims). What I would be interested in would be to simply build a database that mirrors the structure and content of a patent database, with the only difference being that the patents are open. A person looking to disclose an invention would have the option of either a. "mirror" their patent in the open patent database so that people know it can be used, and b. to serve as a reliable source for exhaustive examination made by patent offices around the world. <br></div></div></div></div>