Read the full patent or just the claims? Mitigating design fixation and design distraction when reviewing patent documents

An approach to avoid patent infringement is to review patent documents prior to ideation. However, doing so can lead to design fixation and design distraction. Hence, this paper examines whether reviewing just the patent claim instead of the full patent document can mitigate design fixation and design distraction. 329 undergraduate engineering students were involved in this study. It was found that reviewing just the patent claim can reduce fixation on the design feature reviewed but not on the function of the design feature. In addition, reviewing just the patent claim did not reduce design distraction. The findings of this work can be used to shape the way patent documents are reviewed.