Our Search Services
From Idea
To product
From a simple two-hour search in order to assess the existing patents on your idea, to a comprehensive map of thousands of patents which could influence your strategy, CENTREDOC offers the complete range of services you need for professional decision-making.

Assisted searches
Are you about to embark on a development, and you want to carry out a quick and cheap check for any existing patents on your idea? Our assisted search service is there to enable you to rapidly identify the documents you need to consider in the initial phase of your deliberations. This type of search is performed on our premises, within two hours, and in the presence of the inventor. At the end of this search session on professional databases, you go away with access to our RAPID platform, containing the most relevant documents.
The assisted searches are valid for Innosuisse project demands.
Approximate price: CHF/€ 700.- (excl. tax) | CHF 300.- for Swiss Research Institutions
Average lead time: 2 weeks

State of the art
Before undertaking any R&D process, it is important that you have a clear perspective of the various technological solutions already subject to protection. Harnessing the information available in patents not only saves you unnecessary heavy expenditure, but also provides a precious source of inspiration. Based on the definition of the technological field you wish to explore, our state of the art searches harness the best document search tools in order to give you as comprehensive a perspective as possible, for incomparably better results than public sources can offer. A state of the art search can also contain a supplementary search through scientific publications. The result of a state of the art search is presented in the form of a summary report, containing relevant documents grouped by technical solutions. The identified patents will also be made available on our RAPID platform.
Approximate price: CHF/€ 3’600.- (excl. tax)
Average lead time: 3 weeks

Novelty
Identifying your inventions’ degree of innovation is key to correct decision-making. Based on the description of your invention or the patent application claims, we perform a novelty search across the numerous patent and scientific publication databases available to us. The results of a novelty search take the form of a summary report, containing documents that may be considered relevant or related to certain aspects of the invention described by the client. The passages of the identified documents are highlighted according to their degree of relevance. The identified documents will also be made available on our RAPID platform.
Approximate price: CHF/€ 4’100.- (excl. tax)
Average lead time: 3 weeks

Freedom to operate
Before launching a product on the market, it is important to ensure it does not infringe on an existing patent. A freedom-to-operate search provides a good indication of the risk of infringement. Requests for freedom-to-operate searches must include a detailed technical description of your product. A freedom to operate search is performed in order either to identify rival patents that may hinder bringing your product to market, or to identify documents in the public domain which you can use in the event of a dispute. The document search phase is therefore performed not only in current patent databases, but also in those that possess the most comprehensive document collections. A scientific publications search is generally included. The identified patents will also be made available on our RAPID platform.
Approximate price: CHF/€ 4’600.- (excl. tax)
Average lead time: 3 weeks

Patent landscape
A unique source of technological and legal information, patents are also a precious source of commercially sensitive data, if you have a high-volume analysis capacity. Our Patent landscape service enables you to use the patent information to acquire a comprehensive strategic perspective of the situation. We retrieve for you the relevant documents, and classify them in a tree that you help define. These documents are made available on our RAPID platform, and are accompanied by a statistical analysis. Performing a Patent landscape requires significant cooperation between the study manager and the end client. So this sort of study is split into successive phases, generating intermediate deliverables so that you can continually help guide the work, and keep track of its progress.
Approximate price: On request
Average lead time: Varies according to request