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Welcome! Enjoy and have fun, as you explore the many facets of intellectual property!
Everything you ever want to know about patents, copyrights and trademarks is available for you to explore. If you need professional assistance with conducting a patent search to determine whether your invention appears patentable, we are ready to assist you according to our published fee schedules.
To determine whether your idea can be patented you will want to first determine whether someone else has already patented your invention. You do this by searching various types of databases to see if your invention has already been described. Here is an example to help you!
1. Describe Your Idea or Your Invention:
Keep it simple for your first attempts. Let say your invented a toy that runs on the ground and is that is powered by the wind. If you search the word "TOY" the search results would provide you with a list of every patent that includes the word "toy". This result would be much too large for you to determine whether someone else had already patented your idea or at least had described your idea. Try it by clicking here searching all years with the single word "toy". You should receive back a list of over 16,000+ different patents. You don't have time to read all 16,000+ patents so you need to cut down the number of hits. How do you limit or narrow the search?
2. Limit the Field
To narrow this search to a smaller number of patents, add a limit, such as "AND sail". You added this limit because you know the sail is what captures the wind to propel the toy along the ground. Now click here and enter the limit and request "all years" in the searching. If you narrowed the results to "toy" and "sail" you understand and did the narrowing process correctly. Great! You now are looking at about 80 different patents instead of over 16,000 patents. This is good progress, but we still have too many patents to consider.
3. Further Limit the Field
So now, think WHAT IS SO GREAT ABOUT YOUR INVENTION, what makes your invention better than, for example, all other sail toys that are propelled along the ground. Yep! that is it. The wind is strong and weak at different times and sometimes when the wind is too strong, it will knock the toy to the ground. But so what? You have a solution. My invention is to make the toy upright itself and start to run with the wind again. So now add the new terms to limit the search by refining the original search of "toy AND sail" by adding "AND upright AND ground". Try it by clicking here with the new limiting word. You should now receive back a list of only 5 patents using the search parameters "toy AND sail AND upright AND ground". Now five patents is reasonable , but you want to still limit the search to the real secret.
4. The Real Secret
The secret of the sail toy is locating its center of gravity at the exact right place so that regardless of wind force, the toy will always seek to upright itself as quickly as possible. So you now limit the search with the real secret "building the toy with its center of gravity precisely located to allow the toy to upright itself when blown over by the wind". Do this refine step by adding to your original search of "toy AND sail AND upright AND ground" the new limit "AND center AND gravity". Click here and try the limitations "toy AND sail AND upright AND ground AND center AND gravity". Be certain to use "all years" so you capture all the patents that have ever issued. So now you have a total of how many patents to consider? 2 patents. This is great!! If you read the two uncovered patents you will discover that the sponsor of this web site wrote US patent 4,886,478 entitled "Wind propelled sail toy vehicle" in 1989.
To provide a complete search you should also check for technical publications. Here are a few technical publication database sources for assisting you in this task:Engineering
Electrical Engineering Circuits Archive
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in Huntsville
ASEE Clearinghouse for Engineering Education
Washington University St. Louis-Department of Civil Engineering
Shock and Vibration Information Analysis Center
Biology and Genetics
Biotechnology Information Center
Chemistry
The Royal Society of ChemistryWeb Elements
Search Engines and Other Reference Sources
Clearing House: An Internet Research Library
ComFind: A Worldwide Directory to Businesses The Law Library at the University of Indiana
The McKinley Internet Directory
Gopher for The University of Oregon
Gopher for West Publishing Company
Northwestern University Archive of Law Preprints
Cleveland State University Law Resource Legal Research Tools and Resources
American Association of Law Libraries
Official California Legislative Information
San Diego County Bar Association
The San Diego Daily Transcript If you would like to engage our services to help you determine whether your idea or invention appears to be patentable, send us a sketch or brief description of your invention or idea. We will promptly reply by providing you with a fixed price quote for conducting the patent search and for preparing and filing a patent application on your behalf. All communciations with our office are held in the strictest confidence.
To discover more about intellectual property, patent searching and how to prepare and file a patent application try the following links:
