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Prior Art Search

Searches patents and academic papers for prior art on an invention and writes a report.

Source Download skill
Repository
wanshuiyin/Auto-claude-code-research-in-sleep
Stars
18,482
Licence
MIT
Files
1 file

What it does

This skill teaches an AI agent to act like a patent researcher. Given a description of an invention, the agent extracts the key technical concepts, runs web searches across Google Patents, Espacenet and academic sources such as Google Scholar and arXiv, and reviews the results for existing inventions that might overlap with the idea. It then writes a structured report (patent/PRIOR_ART_REPORT.md) with tables of references, an overlap-risk rating for each, a preliminary freedom-to-operate note and suggestions for claim scope. The skill is adapted from a research-literature skill and is designed for patent-specific searching.

Great for

  • Inventors or small teams checking whether an idea is already patented before paying for a filing
  • Patent agents or attorneys wanting a first-pass list of candidate references to review
  • Researchers who need to check whether a technique has been published before

Skip it if

  • Final legal decisions on patentability or infringement: the skill itself says a professional freedom-to-operate analysis by a patent attorney is needed, and the search is preliminary and web-based, so it can miss references
  • Verifying citations without checking: the skill tells the agent to mark uncertain references [VERIFY], but the output still needs human confirmation before reliance

Try asking

  • “prior art search for my invention description in INVENTION_BRIEF.md”
  • “check patents for a neural network method that compresses sensor data”
  • “现有技术检索 for a battery thermal management device”
  • “Find academic papers and patents from the last 10 years on this algorithm and summarize overlap risk”
Step-by-step guide: how to use Prior Art SearchInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 1 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.

    prior-art-search.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip prior-art-search.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip prior-art-search.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Provide a clear invention brief with technical features and the target jurisdiction so the agent searches the right keywords and language, such as Chinese for CN filings.
  • Treat the output as a starting list: open each cited patent and paper yourself and confirm claims, dates and status before relying on them.
  • Ask for a narrower focus (for example one IPC class or one technical feature) if the first report is too broad.

What's inside

  • SKILL.md

Redistributed unmodified from wanshuiyin/Auto-claude-code-research-in-sleep under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.