Finding a patent that looks like your invention is the normal outcome of a good search, not the end of the project. Close is not the same as blocking. Before you quit or redesign, you have to answer two separate questions that inventors collapse into one: can I still...
“Patent pending” means one thing: an application covering the product is on file with the patent office and has not yet issued or been abandoned. That is the entire legal content of the phrase. It gives you no right to stop anyone from copying the product,...
Roughly 3.5 million patent applications are filed worldwide every year, and fewer than one in five of them is filed at the USPTO. China alone accounts for close to half. If your prior art search stops at US records, you have looked at a minority of the documents an...
Prior art is any evidence that your invention was already known to the public before your filing date. Under 35 U.S.C. 102, that means anything patented, described in a printed publication, in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public anywhere in the...
A patent application has five parts, and only one of them defines what the patent covers: the claims. The abstract does not. The title does not. The drawings do not. Under federal regulation the abstract cannot even be used to interpret claim scope, and it is capped...
Google Patents indexes more than 120 million patent documents from over 100 patent offices, and it costs nothing to use. A competent search on it takes six to ten hours and runs in four passes: keywords, classification codes, citation chains, and assignee sweeps. The...
