Chapter 4. Search for existing patents

To overcome a fear, here's all you have to do: realize the fear is there, and do the action you fear anyway.

- Peter McWilliams

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has an excellent online patent database containing all the patents that have been granted.

• Patents that have been applied for but not yet granted are not available for public viewing.

The USPTO website: http://www.uspto.gov

Spend some time looking for patents that might match or are close to what you have invented. It might be that someone else has already patented your idea and there is little point in manufacturing your product if that is the case. However, if you have not seen the product in the marketplace, there is a good chance that it has not been patented. Usually, and this might be a huge assumption on my part, if someone has made the significant effort of patenting something, they will have tried to market it. That is not always the case, though. Many business ideas begin well, get patented, then go out of business. An individual may have a strong patent granted to him relating closely to what you thought was your original idea.

You have several choices in that case. You can contact the person and work out what compensation they would expect for you licensing their invention, you can focus on working around their patent (or patents) and filing for your own patent based on that, or you can simply walk away from the whole idea of bringing a product to market.

If you are like me, you are already enchanted with the idea of bringing your product to market and are reluctant to walk away from it, even at this early stage. Just remember, you have not invested a penny in it yet. As you progress through the next 12 months, you will have invested a lot more time in it, and probably money too. If someone else already patented the essence of your product, you might seriously reconsider continuing.

• If you discover at this early stage that someone else already patented your product idea, consider walking away.

There is an art to patent searching. No matter how thoroughly you search the database, there is still the chance that you didn’t find a patent that covered your invention. You can pay money to get a patent search done.

End of chapter exercise:

Write down the answers to the following questions:

· What is the title of an existing patent in the same area as your invention? _____________________________

· What year was the patent granted? _____________________________

· Imagine you discovered that your idea was already patented. Describe in one sentence an alternative design that would not infringe on that existing patent: _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________