From bias to breakthrough: how to strengthen IP search outcomes

High-stakes intellectual property (IP) decisions depend on the strength of your prior art searches. Yet even sophisticated teams continue to miss critical references – often not because of lack of effort but due to underlying human, linguistic, or strategic blind spots. On December 11, Managing IP will host a webinar with experts from CAS to explore why these gaps persist and how practitioners can meaningfully reduce them. Matt McBride, director of CAS IP Services, and Mike Axton, manager of the customer success team, will examine the following key areas: • The ‘invisible hand’ in the search box – how human bias shapes decisions without being noticed; • Efficiency versus exhaustiveness – knowing where diminishing returns begin and where risk remains; • Degrees of separation in prior art (the ‘Kevin Bacon effect’) – when concept proximity matters more than keywords; and • Semantic gaps in patent searching – the limitations of language and keyword reliance. The session will break down the anatomy of common missed references, including poor query design, incomplete content sources, lack of subject-matter context, and over-reliance on automation. Real-world examples from drug discovery and complex technical fields will illustrate practical methods to de-risk critical searches, identify hidden gaps, and present findings clearly for internal decision-making. The webinar is designed to assist IP search professionals, R&D teams, patent attorneys, and anyone responsible for due diligence or freedom-to-operate assessments. There will be a live Q&A, offering participants the opportunity to address their specific challenges. Register now and join us at 3pm GMT (10am EST) on December 11.