Designing a patent system: choosing users, core workflows and success metrics

As a product manager, design a patent system: a product that helps people deal with patents. Decide what the system is for and whom it serves, choose which user problems to solve first, describe the core experience you would build, and explain how you would measure whether it succeeds. ```hint Pin down whose patent problem The phrase covers very different products, from software that a patent office uses to examine applications to a tool that helps an inventor check whether an idea is new. Settle who runs the system and who the primary user is before designing any screens. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Who operates the system: a national patent office, a company managing its employees' inventions and its patent portfolio, or an independent service for inventors? - Which stages of the patent lifecycle are in scope: searching existing patents, preparing and filing an application, examination, or managing granted patents and disputes? - Does the system need to submit filings to an official patent office, or can the first version stop before the official submission? - Which country's patent rules apply at launch, and is protection in other countries in scope? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A chosen interpretation of "patent system" with a stated goal and a reason for the choice. - The users across the patent lifecycle, such as inventors, patent attorneys and agents, examiners, companies and researchers, with one primary segment chosen and justified. - Pain points specific to patents, such as searching for earlier work, meeting filing requirements, the cost of legal help, deadlines, and keeping an unfiled invention confidential. - A prioritized set of solutions, with enough depth on the hardest one (often search for earlier work) to show how it would work and how its quality would be judged. - Success metrics and risks, including the line between information and legal advice. ### Follow-up Questions - Walk me through how the search for earlier patents and publications would work, and how you would know its results are good enough. - An inventor relies on your search, files an application, and is rejected because of a reference your search missed. What does the product owe that user, and how would you design for that case? - How would the product make money without compromising the confidentiality of unfiled inventions?