How do i do a patent search?

Answer 1

Here you go:

http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html -- Search Patents

Hope that helps! I wish you much success & happiness in all your ventures!

Answer 2

Inventors and entrepreneurs who are looking to cut costs and do some of the preliminary searching on their own will want to take a look at the United States Patent Office patent search page. A lot of information can be found free, and the system is not terribly difficult to use. There is also an excellent Help Section on the PTO site to educate users on how to use the online search features. There is also another excellent (and free) site that you should use when searching - Free Patents Online. Whenever I search I always use both the USPTO and Free Patents Online. Perhaps the best thing about Free Patents Online is that they provide copies of the actual PDF documents, which contain all the images. Using the images on the USPTO website is cumbersome to say the least. Free Patents Online is also normally much faster than the USPTO site. Having said that, I personally find the searching better on the USPTO site, but then when I find a relevant patent I go to Free Patents Online for the PDFs and to access related patents, which is much easier because everything is hyperlinked there. So, I suggest that you consider using the strengths of both sites to make your searching easier. You can also try Patent Storm as well, which is another full text patent search site. As of December 2006 Patent Storm only has patents going back to 1990, but promises to become the most comprehensive source of free patent information on the web.

When using the USPTO search features, one trick to improve search quality is to start by using the Advanced Search Page and searching in the specification field. Lets say, for example, you are looking for patents that relate to insulated containers for carrying beverages. In order to do this you will first need to pick a term or phrase that might appear within the written description of issued patents. Following this example, you might try in the search box - SPEC/"insulating beverage container". When this search was conducted the results returned a list of 14 patents issued since 1976 that have used that phrase. This points to the first problem encountered by doing your own patent search online at the USPTO. You can only do full text searching back to 1976. This is probably not too much of a concern for those operating in the high-tech sector, but important to known nonetheless.

In this case there are not many to choose from. Many times, however, the list will contain hundreds of patents depending upon the popularity of the term or phrase selected.

Once you receive managable results you need to read the patents and see which ones are relevant. Try various search terms to make sure you are covering all possible descriptions of the invention. Along the way, as you read the patents and identify related ones keep track of the numbers and identify the US classification that relates to the type of invention you are searching. Upon identifying several US classifications that seem to relate to your invention, return to the Advanced Search Page and do a classification search.

Any successful search must use rely upon the Patent Classification System, and any successful search (in my opinion) my start out extremely broad to make sure that the proper US classifications are identified. While the classification system is helpful, never forget that patent are classified as the patent office sees fit. In order to identify the appropriate classification a broad search is necessary to make sure you familiarize yourself with how inventors and patent attorneys routinely characterize certain inventions, features, scientific principles and concepts.

For more information on this topic see:

http://www.ipwatchdog.com/patent_search_101.html

Answer 3

Check out http://www.uspto.gov/patft/