1. Write the technical question
Describe the actual structure, mechanism and intended use. Separate verified product features from supplier claims and proposed improvements. Record the target territories and whether the question concerns prior art, a possible filing or a product launch. A product keyword alone is not a claim analysis.
2. Treat AI screening as a candidate generator
Supply the product and what differs from earlier products. Retain the first answer, settings, citations and omissions. A score is a vendor screening signal rather than a patent grant probability or permission to sell. In the retained grader cases, 59/100 and 0/100 are original vendor scores; each frozen case still failed one condition. Do not substitute those numbers for our test outcomes.
3. Resolve each reference to its original publication
Check identifier, title, publication date and relevant passages. A generic search page or generated AI query is not the original document. Read cited claims and descriptions in context; a matching sentence does not show that every feature appears in one earlier disclosure. In our retained review, five primary identifiers and three sampled passages were independently checked, with the remaining scope explicitly limited.
Check that your cutoff was actually applied
A cutoff typed into a query is not proof that the product applied it. In our native Google Patents known-number case, US6536306B1 before:publication:20000101 opened the original 2003 publication through a known-number shortcut. The cutoff case failed; we retained the first query and result rather than replacing it with a successful search. Inspect the returned publication event and active filter interface before including a document in a date-bounded screen. Keyword search and advanced date filtering were not tested in this run.
4. Keep novelty and freedom to operate separate
A novelty screen concerns earlier disclosure. A freedom-to-operate assessment also needs applicable claims, territory, ownership and current legal status for the contemplated activity. Include design rights and other relevant IP where appropriate. No matching search hit is not clearance, and a patentable improvement may still overlap an earlier right.
5. Hand over an auditable packet
Retain the product facts, search terms, territories, date cutoff, candidate publications, verbatim passages, missing claim elements and first AI outputs. Identify who prepared and reviewed the packet. Do not upload confidential unpublished inventions to a public demo without an appropriate disclosure decision. The tools here have not supplied a professional legal opinion.