Everything you need to know about Invention Village
Invention Village is an AI-powered patent-intelligence platform built for corporate R&D engineers, tech leads, and in-house IP teams. Grounded in a real, searchable patent database, it helps your team mine for innovation and turn a technical direction into an R&D roadmap — so the direction is clear before you engage a patent firm.
No. Invention Village is an R&D preparation and analysis tool that helps you clarify your R&D direction before working with a patent attorney. It automates prior art search, feasibility analysis, and R&D direction planning, but final patent filing should always involve a qualified patent attorney.
Invention Village offers a range of public patent tools, including “Innovation Mining (TRIZ)” (systematic innovation directions), “Patentability Assessment” (a multi-angle read in minutes), “Patent Search” (semantic search over tens of millions of real patents), “Freedom-to-Operate Screening” (related patents and technical overlaps), “R&D Roadmap Planning” (turning a technical direction into an R&D roadmap), and “Design-Around Analysis” (breaking down competitor claims to generate engineering-level design-around candidates — whether they actually infringe is for a lawyer to assess). All are built on a real, searchable patent database, helping corporate R&D teams do real research and product design with patent intelligence.
Invention Village uses multiple leading AI models optimized for the patent domain. While AI analysis provides valuable insights and catches issues human reviewers might miss, results should be treated as professional-grade references rather than definitive legal opinions.
Invention Village's patent search covers massive patent data from CNIPA (China National Intellectual Property Administration) as well as major patent offices worldwide (USPTO, EPO, JPO, KIPO, etc.). Both Innovation Mining (TRIZ) and R&D Roadmap Planning build on this real, searchable patent library, with deep optimization for Chinese-language patent documents. The platform supports both Chinese and English interfaces.
Invention Village's analysis features accept PDF and Word (DOCX) file uploads, and you can also simply paste or type a text description.
“Innovation Mining (TRIZ)” is for when you already have a solution and want the next breakthrough — it starts from technical contradictions and gives you multiple innovation directions. “R&D Roadmap Planning” is for when you have a technical direction and want to develop it into a complete, actionable R&D roadmap. Both are grounded in real patent search.
Search is grounded in a real, verifiable patent database. Any parameters, materials, or values the AI cannot derive from your input are clearly marked 'verify-in-R&D' and never fabricated; patent numbers not found in search results are redacted. This respects R&D rigor and is also a compliance baseline.
General AI often fabricates patent numbers. We retrieve from a real database of 51M+ patents (CN inventions, utility models, US), so every result is an existing patent you can verify. It's 'can vs cannot', not just 'better'.
About 51M+ patents: ~21.8M CN inventions, ~22.8M CN utility models, and ~6.4M US patents, with search coverage spanning CNIPA, USPTO, EPO, JPO and KIPO.
You describe your solution or the contradiction you're stuck on. It analyzes the technical contradiction and proposes multiple differentiated R&D directions, each checked against existing patents to find white space.
One idea becomes an actionable 5-part R&D roadmap, grounded in real patent search. Anything the AI can't derive is left blank as 'verify-in-R&D' — never fabricated.
No patent background needed. Describe in engineering terms what your team is building, testing, or improving. The tools handle the patent search and analysis.
Your inputs are used to run the analysis, and successful results are saved to your account's run history (free runs are kept for 90 days; you can delete entries at any time). We do not sell your data, and unverifiable values are never invented into your output. See our Privacy Policy for details.
New users get 25 bonus credits to try the features, and the quick tools include trial runs on sign-up. After that it's pay-as-you-go credits with no subscription, and credits never expire.
From a ten-person R&D group to a hundred-person R&D center — billing follows project usage, with no seat minimum.
Yes — it is competition that both US and Chinese patent systems explicitly encourage: the public-notice function of claims exists precisely so competitors know where the boundary is and can innovate outside it. Designing around is R&D in nature: a different technical route to an equal or better product. Note: our output is an engineering reference; a formal FTO by patent counsel is still required before launch.
No — and no tool should make that guarantee. What we do: every candidate direction is adversarially attacked by our own doctrine-of-equivalents engine, and directions that fail are explicitly flagged; surviving candidates only get ranking signals to help you decide which direction to take to counsel first. Honest signals beat false guarantees.