It is common to conduct a patent search when designing new products for commercial purposes. This paper examines whether reviewing patent documents to avoid infringement can affect design creativity based on an experimental study involving 106 undergraduate engineering students. As part of the study, the participants were divided into three groups and asked to individually design a water kettle in 20 min. Participants from the first group were each given an identical patent document at the start of the experiment and were warned not to infringe the patented design. Participants from the second group were each given another patent document and the same warning. Participants from the third group were not given any patent documentation. The experiment results show that reviewing patent documents prior to ideation, even when done to avoid infringement, can fixate and lead to the inclusion of design features associated with the patent documents reviewed. In addition, reviewing patent documents can also cause distractions and result in the exclusion of design features that may otherwise be included. The findings of this work can contribute towards design pedagogy and the development of processes to handle patent documents in design projects.

中文翻译：

---

创意设计中的固定和分心：审查专利文件以避免侵权的影响

在为商业目的设计新产品时，进行专利检索是很常见的。本文基于一项涉及 106 名工程本科生的实验研究，检验审查专利文件以避免侵权是否会影响设计创造力。作为研究的一部分，参与者被分为三组，并要求在 20 分钟内单独设计一个水壶。第一组的参与者在实验开始时每人都获得了一份相同的专利文件，并被警告不要侵犯专利设计。第二组的参与者每人都获得了另一份专利文件和相同的警告。第三组的参与者没有获得任何专利文件。实验结果表明，在构思之前审查专利文件，即使这样做是为了避免侵权，可以关注并导致包含与审查的专利文件相关的设计特征。此外，审查专利文件也可能会分散注意力并导致排除可能包含的设计特征。这项工作的发现有助于设计教学法和设计项目中处理专利文件的流程的开发。