Covid-19 is not just a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic sweeping across the globe causing hardships and sorrows; it’s also a new word, and the opportunity to look at it through a patent lens is similarly a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Covid-19 has been around for some two years, so why look at it now? Patent applications are typically published 18 months after the first application, usually the priority application. It makes for an information black hole over that time. Sometimes we know some basic bibliographic details such as title and applicant, but the rest of the specification is hidden. Applications made in late 2019 or early 2020 weren’t published until about mid 2021, and that’s just seven or eight months ago.
We’re going to look at a few particular keywords relating to Covid-19, and we’re going to stick to the title, abstract and claims because these are where the applications directly related to solving the problem will mention the keywords.
Simply, the search string is TAC=(covid, covid19, (corona* w2 2019), (sars w2 cov w2 2), (sars w2 cov2), ((19, 2019) w2 (ncov, hcov))). Read more