The first step to find out if your invention can be patented is to conduct a free patent search online in any free patent information database online.
How can you do a free patent search to find out if your invention can be patented?
Some of the most popular free patent databases in the world are http://www.uspto.gov, http://ep.espacenet.org, http://www.wipo.int and http://www.surfip.gov.sg.
We will briefly discuss in this article how you can conduct a Free Patent Search in USPTO database. This is the first of the seven articles that we will write to teach any one to use USPTO website to conduct patent search.
USPTO database contains over 33 million patent documents and is updated every week. The website is probably the largest patent website in the world. It provides a free patent search facility for both beginners and advanced users.
How can I conduct a Patent Search at USPTO?
The answer to this question is given in a technical way in many websites. We will try to avoid the jargon and we will try to enable even a layperson that is not exposed to search databases regularly to do it easily.
The USPTO deals with conducting a Patent Search using its freely searchable patent database through the Internet. The instructions are given at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/ptdl/step7.htm The USPTO stresses the importance on 7 Steps each one to be done one after the other.
The Patent Search website Tmpsearchers.com has started a patent training course online. We can train you online wherever you live and the lessons and exercises are sent on a daily basis for three weeks. We teach a simplified version of methods to our students using Free Patent Databases. Although a paid database is more users friendly, the official free databases are updated with regular data and the expensive paid databases take some time (a short time) to update themselves to be current. Therefore it is necessary to conduct a search in the official free patent databases online even after using paid patent databases. A proper training and search strategy for free databases is therefore very important.
One problem is that the USPTO does not allow you to do the free patent search on patents granted prior to 1976 unless you start the patent search with the class and sub class alone. So you need to identify the classes and then do a patent research of pre 1976 patents also.
Our method slightly differs from the methodology advised by USPTO and consists of 9 Steps.
1. Start the search with some relevant keywords
When you do a search using USPTO you will go to the search inter-face at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html Start with the issued patents and start with using some keywords, which are relevant to your invention. You may use either the quick search method or the advanced search method. Be sure to study the help pages at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/help/help.htm and especially the page at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/help/helpadv.htm if you are going to use the advanced search method.
2. You will get some results and by using more relevant keywords you can reduce the number of patent titles to a minimum of about 40. Please keep a record of all the keywords that you used.
3. Please note all the classifications of cited in these patents. Note both the US Classification and the International Classification of Patents. This is a must.
4. Repeat the patent search with the Published Applications using http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.html Again record the search queries and the classifications.
5. Now study the classifications that are repeated time and again in your results and try to narrow down the invention to some particular classifications. It is not very difficult to do although it will take some time.
You may learn the other four steps by in our patent training web page.
These steps should give you a very comprehensive picture of the free patent search that can be done at USPTO.
A similar strategy can be followed at other free patent databases online using the International classifications that you have identified.
Working at the Free Patent Search website Tmpsearchers.com we find that we are able to find patents easily when we do patent search this way, but the key here is to master the keywords to be applied to conduct the patent search. If you want to know more or learn other advanced techniques of patent search using the free patent search interface of USPTO patent database, please contact us for any help needed.
Ramaswami a Patent and Trademarks Attorney in India
provides free counseling in Patents and trademarks in
India. Know more about the services you can ask for at
http://www.tmpsearchers.com/contact.asp
