The United States Patent Office has its own searchable site, but if you play with both you'll soon see why the IBM site is better. Plus you get to see the drawings at IBM's site!
Patent Searching on the Web
You can only get a US Patent if your invention is "unique and not obvious". The People at the US Patent office who are paid to sift through prior patents to check uniqueness are called "Patent Examiners". Normally, though - looking up old patents, old magazine article, old newspaper articles etc. is done ahead of time by your Patent Attorney. I have always preferred to simultaneously be doing my own "searching". Why? Because when you do it yourself, you can (and always do) go off in different directions and learn all kinds of relevant and interesting facts. The hired searcher has a different brain than yours, so it's impossible for you both to consider the same raw data in the same way!
Until the Internet, it took a trip to the Los Angeles Central Library and an afternoon in their Patent Room with their very helpful assistants. It was fun! Now you can search all the Patents created after the early 70's on the Web. AND it is much easier and faster to go to ALL those weird, different branches of your idea.The best site for Patent Searching was set up by IBM (click on their logo).
The United States Patent Office has its own searchable site, but if you play with both you'll soon see why the IBM site is better. Plus you get to see the drawings at IBM's site!
More about Provisional Patents
The US Patent Office web site now discusses the new Provisional Patents. For clearer explanation of the details, however, go to the following two sites set up by Patent Attorneys. I prefer their discussion of the Provisionals. Try:
http://www.lightlink.com/bbm/provapp.html and http://hayboo.com/hayboo/briefing/kice2.htm
Last Comments
1.You can't patent IDEAS! Most people think that is what a patent is about. Wrong, wrong! You can only patent some specific mechanical embodiment of the idea (or in the case of a Design Patent - exactly what your design looks like. You can patent new living plants and new chemical processes - but I am only talking about mechanical things here for the most part - because that is all I do). As an example, say I have this idea for a one pound, portable, 2 Megawatt Laser Tree branch trimmer. The Patent office has to see exactly what goes into this machine before they would grant a patent. Such a raw idea means nothing on its own and deserves no protection!
2. The only protection you get from a Patent is what is described at the end of your Patent in the CLAIMS. All the descriptions and pictures before the claims are meaningless as far as the real protection goes. The abstract and words may describe all kinds of issues related to an invention - but, if a point is not officially listed in the Claims, it isn't protected intellectual property!
The above points are probably confusing you. Don't feel bad. I have been patenting stuff for a couple of decades now and did not grasp those two points myself until about three years ago when one of my inventor friends suggested I might have better results with his patent attorney. Well, I finally ended up with a super sharp Patent Attorney I can respect, because he really understand what the Patent Office humans have to do (and go through) and can explain complicated legal things to me so my brain goes: "Ah, ha - I get it!"
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