Research Your Idea

It is essential to conduct a search to make sure that you are the first person with the idea. We suggest that you start by going to the type of store that would eventually offer your invention for sale. 

For example, if your idea is an office product, go to office supply stores and make sure that you do not find your invention already being offered. Also, check specialty catalogs that might be likely to carry an invention such as yours. If you do not find it at the kind of store that carries similar items or in a catalog, then it is time to do a patent search.

There are several ways to do this. One way is to go to the nearest Patent and Trademark Depository Library (see the list posted on our website under "Libraries"). The librarians in the Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries are very knowledgeable and helpful and this service is free. Or, you can conduct a fairly thorough search online by going to uspto.gov (on our "Links" page) if you enter every key word that you can think of to describe your invention. It is also very important to do a "classification" search. Many times you will come across inventions listed in the same classification as yours that you might have missed doing only a key word search.

We offer a step-by step guide to online patent searching guide.   You can find it by clicking here!

It is also very important to search all possible years. When we were inventing Ghostline, we found a patent from 1877 (that was NOT a typo) that had to be listed as "prior art" for our second patent. www.uspto.gov   is the official site for the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office in Washington. You can do that search without cost also. Or, if you wish, you can hire the search to be done by one of the firms that specialize in this service. Several such firms are located in the Washington, DC area. 

It is possible to do a good patent search yourself. We conducted our own patent search at the Patent and Trademark Depository Library here in Dallas. The librarians there led us through it step by step. We satisfied ourselves that we had done a thorough search. When we went to our patent attorney, however, he looked over all the printouts we had made of any patents that we thought looked similar to our idea in any possible way. He said it looked like we had done a pretty good job but he still thought it advisable to have a professional search done. We did, and the professional search came back with exactly the same "prior art" we had found.

If you live anywhere near Washington, DC or if you can make a trip there, you can go to the U. S. Patent and Trademark office and do the search there yourself. The public is welcome to go there where you can look through the actual files of patents (as opposed to looking in the books at the Depository Libraries). 

Your local inventors association or patent attorneys can refer you to patent search firms if you choose to go that route.