Doing a full and comprehensive patent search is prudent when you are willing to invest your hard earned resources into an idea or invention. If it’s not done you might be investing your resources into an idea that is not patentable at all and/or you might be reinventing the wheel. With a full patent search, you can be ascertained that you are investing right and thus can utilize your resources consciously. Doing patent search is something that requires a deep understanding of the domain as well as the patent regulatory norms of the intended jurisprudence and if you lack any of these two then you might be compromising with your invention.

Important benefits of doing a patent search

• A patent search provides insight as to the scope of patent protection that may be granted to you by the respective patent office.
• It may form the basis on which you decide to invest additional time and funds into the project.
• Search results obtained from the patent search can aid your patent attorney in writing your patent application.
• In case, similar prior arts are found you can work around to improving the content of the application.

With this article, we came up with some important ways through which a patent search can be done effectively.

Home Grown Detective Patent Search- If you have an idea and wish to do an effective patent search then you can start it right from your favorite market place. Keep looking for products that may be similar to your invention(s) and scrutinize the features of the product. It may give you some idea whether your invention is already available or not. If your intended features are already present in some/any product then it is better to abandon the concept as it may help you save a lot of your resources.

Search Engine Patent Searching- Search engines have revolutionized the way information is being searched and retrieved. Same goes for patent searching wherein we can put in various keywords pertaining to our invention and get desired results. Though search engine patent searches are not full-proof, still, they can give you some idea/insight about whether your idea is a novel one and can be patented.

Doing patent search on Google have become very easy these days as it has come up with interfaces like “GOOGLE PATENTS” and “GOOGLE SCHOLAR” those are built specially for innovators, scientists and those who are looking for patent related searches.

Searches on Free Patent Databases- The USPTO has a free search engine where you can perform a basic patent search yourself. Any patent that has ever been issued is contained in the USPTO’s database so this is an ideal place to look for other inventions similar to your own. However, if you are an uninitiated it may be a bit overwhelming for you to navigate through the various features of the database.

Searches on Third Party Databases- If you are not satisfied with the free resources and wish to invest some money on your search then there are many paid patent search databases available out there that you can use.

Using Patent Search Professional Companies- These days there are many patent search professional companies that work independent of law firms and can be proved as a cost-effective means to do a comprehensive patent search. Those who are not willing to incur the costs of hiring a law-firm can outsource patent search related activities to them. Since these companies are doing patent searches day-in and day-out you can expect a search that is reliable, true and comprehensive. In case you are searching out for such a company, Sagacious IP could be the desired destination.