Patent anyone?
Posted on September 2nd, 2008 – 2:44 PMBy Thomas Lee
As any inventor would know, the first step to commercializing a technology is to secure a patent. And that means conducting a patent search to see if anyone beat you to the punch.
There are number of websites will perform the search for a fee. One, patentsearchexpress.com claims to have developed a search technology that will allows users to find “hidden patents,” patents inventors deliberately try to hide so that they can sue some unsuspecting dope for infringement. (I hope the site patented its patent search technology.)
But there are a number of sites that will perform searchers at no cost. Patents.com offers searches in the United States and Europe in three different languages. There’s also Google (Geez, is there anything Google can’t find?) which can search over 7 million patent documents. You can even view the Wright Brothers’ original patent for their “flying machine.”
In the end though, your best bet is to go directly to the source. The United States Patent and Trademark Office site is kind of ugly but thoroughly effective and free. The site is not terribly intuitive but you can take a free class at the Minneapolis Central Public Library. (See my April post: No time and space machines but maybe world peace?)
At some point though, you will need to pony up some cash and hire a patent lawyer to protect your invention. Guess nothing is life is entirely free. Unless you can invent a technology that will magically grant you patents at no cost.
Just make sure you patent it first.
