Evaluation of a Visual Tool for Early Patent Infringement Detection During Design
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Author
Malizia, Alessio
Sorce, Salvatore
Gentile, Vito
Atherton, Mark
Harrison, David
Jiang, Pingfei
Attention
2299/21787
Abstract
Patent infringement detection usually implies research among documents in different forms, in both natural and unstructured language, often involving a lot of human resources and time. In order to ease this patent check process, we previously presented a visual tool to be used by designers themselves at any stage of the design process, providing them with useful and reliable information for deciding whether to steer their design away from potential patent infringements. In this work, we report on a usability study carried out on such a tool with 21 professional de- signers from industry in the field of mechanical engineering. The outcome of our study shows that our tool is very well accepted by designers, and felt useful and helpful even by legal experts.