Patent Attorney and Founder
You have a question? Google it, right? This is the source of all answers. I’m here today to talk about your work, your diligence, and what it takes. Do you know how to do a patent search in Google? [Music] I’m J.D. Houvener, a patent attorney and managing partner here at Bold Patents Law Firm. It’s my honor to be here to talk with you about how to structure a patent search in Google. I’m going to go through this and share my screen with you—no jokes. Going through a quick byte, click to watch, walk you through the different tips, tools, and fields to enter. So, you can do the diligence that it takes to make sure that your invention is novel, ensuring that you’re confident before you take the next step in talking with a patent attorney.
Before we get started, I want to let you know that we do have some timestamps along the way. So, you can fast forward this video to different parts of this advanced Google patent search tool. You’ll see me moving my mouse around, you’ll see the screen. You’re probably going to watch the whole thing from start to finish if you can, but if your time is short, you’ve got to just get to the good stuff, look it down below. You’re going to see the different indexes you can move to and forward ahead. [Music]
I started, so it took the, you know, basically, the example you were—you done to the submersible container. Oh, this, you know, this is from the perfume, you know, you know the top reference, yeah. But in terms of visualizing what I was thinking, the invention was something like this where it’s like a container that is able to go a selective distance underneath the water with a propeller, and that something to secure the container is something that’s going to regulate it, and there’s a controlling device that sort of has a control telling you how deep this is going to be in a quadrant. You can’t keep it at the right temperature, right? So, let’s dive into how I would approach this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. To track, let this PSO guide you really in any way. You know, just some of the first things I would do with this would be to, you know, here we have some real clear, you know, sort of patent attorney version of claim elements which are starting from here. You know, I think one of the challenges or things that are important for, you know, better to look at. You know, you’re looking at searches like this or how you’re going to, you know, define what your invention is and what its features are. You know, if I were the better, I’d say, you know, container secured by net underwater. It can be watertight for food items. The container has some type of attachment mechanism. It could be a clip, could be Velcro. You know, one thing people will see, you know, trying to teach folks a bitterness, this kind of demo is that the words you use to describe an invention are different from the words your friend would use to describe an invention or components of the invention and significantly different than what a patent attorney would describe an invention.
So, one of the challenges with searches like this, north areas that might encourage inventors to depart from, you know, their standard intuition would be to, you know, think of, you know, what are going to be used to describe different aspects of the invention and not to pigeonhole yourself and what you think it might be, no. So, in the kitchen or the container is going to attach to the net in some capacity. There’s going to be a mechanism to move the net up and down specifically in the invention or is the way that’s a propeller, you know, from an searching standpoint. Ideally, I’d like to find particularly concerned with that. You want to search broadly enough, you know, a good patent is going to claim broadly as possible that isn’t constrained by the propeller. It could be, you know, a winch on the boat, you know, it could be some kind of you can have an airbag that selectively lets out air that, you know, just the buoyancy of the device, sinister just keeping that coming from a particular embodiment of your invention and then thinking about what types of terms can be useful searching. That is, you know, a good thing to do both at the beginning and maybe show you iteratively, iteratively as it progresses through. It also has a temperature sensing device thermometer. So what you want to do here’s, you know, I kind of laid out three things that just guidance I would give an inventor looking into how they want to do a search. You say literally, what is it? It’s a box with a rope, with a net, with a line to tether, with a thermometer, temperature gauge, pressure sensor, depth sensor. Use words like that. It can be helpful. What is it functionally, but what are other people going to call similar things? That’s it. You know, thing that I think will help, you know, designers as they do these things, you know, what’s it? What is it going to do? You know, one of the first things I thought of with this is that maybe this is a fisherman who’s out there. Sooner, he wants to submerge it 30 feet down the water is colder to keep it cold, you know, maybe sit that is some, you know, what is this doing? Because sometimes you’ll find that searching just the specific mechanical aspects of invention will get you a lot of noise. So get your competitions and lots of different approaches, especially with and then again, what are what you’ve had attorneys call this device and then where its features? Yeah, you’re probably not going to know unless you are a patent attorney, you’ve done this a lot, or you get going in search. That’s something I’ll try to point out. You know, examples, “Hey Brandon, could you make that more doc, bigger as you kind of go through it?” Yes, most of the, yep, it does. Go ahead, yes. So it’s always good, you know, in addition to, you know, in just looking at this example, I kind of based a lot of what I was looking at to mention kind of on this type of figure where you have some type of storage box in here. It’s going to contain something. There’s going to be a tether above it, line tether anything below it and then some type of mechanism to control the height of it. So as, you know, it’s a kind of mention one of the first things, you know, working with an invention like this, you know, you know, JD’s that I want a really good approach and patent tutorials where you want to try some sort of layman’s terms descriptions for an invention, did you know some things that you might call it to try to find, you know, you start really broad, you say, “Okay, let’s try to find things that are storing some boxes. They’re storing things on the walk to regulate its temperature,” you know. So, one of the first things people might use this to store beer is or food, you find pretty quickly. But these are used in lots of like oil applications which is probably noise. You want to try to filter somehow. But what was the example here was one so this one kind of stuck out to me just an initial, and you know, really what we’re trying to do here, let’s get ourselves in the right ballpark, you know, it’s first searches like this, you know, sometimes you’ll find your attention right away with something, you know, that’s going to be more complex, has a lot of different parts, it can be more challenging. So here’s one, you know, so I saw this, you know, it’s an apparatus for cooling food underwater containing, you know, temperature. So you think it’s important is with patents like this is you want to try to find, you know, the abstract is always useful, means from a patent standpoint, legal standpoint, one of the abstract isn’t sure JD’s taught some of these webinars the abstract exist so the people searching for patents can have an idea with the patents about that largely with the abstract this for so it often tells you what’s in there but really what you’re looking for words are specific teachings within the patent that are going to be you know that may anticipate or you know for someone skilled in the art if they have not about that teaching what your invention be obvious to someone with that you know that’s good at signing no fishing coolers or submersible water coolers, you know, it’s a you know in terms of how that google algorithm huckle this one up we got a Korean patent. These are machine translated when possible I like to use an American-style version of this file version of it, namely you have you generally have there’s not translation issues usually and you have clear pictures one of the first things based on this title seems like we’re in the ball what I like you know these initial ones you want to say okay what we have here what kind of information can we glean this that will help us for lack of more efficiently with our next search. There’s a lot of these, you know, the first stuff you do sometimes sometimes you find something right away sometimes there’s guest check yes check it a lot of the traditions of that and kinda have to keep continuing through it some of the things you might look for here you know if you look at some of these classes here is our CPC classes as opposed to us PT yeah USPTO ones, you know, initially here I’m not particularly intrigued by these JD. You’ll see this is one of the challenges we have with this is I had trouble finding good classes ideally you’d find ideally you’d find comfortable zai here that says, you know, retractable, you know, submersible container for regulating temperature, you know, and if you find that let’s click on that and let’s see all the other ones that are like that, you know, what you can do is you can add the class to this here and that’ll search for things like this but within also that classification you could also use a similar approach with the USPTO classification but not through Google debts that wasn’t, so here you may want to look for like this what I try to find would be some type of it appears to be in closable container probably a lot more moving parts here than what we’re looking for but I wouldn’t like that necessarily to discourage you key concept for you know as an inventor consider when you’re searching for patents of this is that the reference doesn’t you know the reference can be very different from what you’re finding but it can have teachings that relate to your invention for example so you notice of these so through these what I’m trying to find reasons to investigate further before you kind of throw this one back into the auction and trying these search you know controlling water temperature maintaining one thing you notice here this is defined as an apparatus it’s not called a box or a container those are think good the good things early on search to take note of you know kind of like I mentioned if you’re just using the word thermometer that could get you in trouble because it’s if you’re using that as a keyword search that’s going to throw out a lot that’s gonna throw out a lot of patents you know that might have kicked this one out you know go back to show you you know don’t use that same search with the word thermometer might not show up this one water temperature Direction sensor the thermistor you know so one thing I would do with this you know take the word thermistor kind of come up here how is outlined a few different words that I would see if I so if we can go back and constrain that previously searched previous search by the word thermometer.
Notice that one I was just looking at, even though that one wasn’t gold, you know, I would consider that a perfect reference that we’re looking at. What I’m trying to illustrate is some of the constraints you run into if keyword searching. Mister backed here and it came right back up, so this is a good way to illustrate that principle of thinking broadly when you define your terms. If I go through the invention and using keywords, probably one of the more, you know, people often ask if this is an order of science, this is where it becomes both thanks because a thermistor, you know, if you asked me for five words for a temperature regulation device that wouldn’t have been one of the first five I could do. However, what I just learned is a piece of good information that’s going to help me conduct the rest of the search more efficiently. So that would be one of the main things I would try to illustrate with this particular reference is, you know, be, you want to be broad and open-minded, especially early on the search. Use lots of different terms, you know, what it’ll be, men trotting narrow this down.
Looking at this one again, you know, the other things I would want to do with this initially because it’s, you know, this isn’t a perfect match for the invention, but, you know, you want to find some things broadly and then narrow it down. I mentioned these international classifications didn’t really stick out to me as something that’s gonna be particularly awful. I like to look at the USPTO classifications for something to make a copy of some of these. Did that really quickly, so this is the USPTO ver, this is it the patent from the US the same version of the thing of the patent from the US Patent and Trademark Office. Here are some of the USPTO classes from it.
And, oh, but I’ll do usually can’t keep a bank of these, so any kind of fine, it’s reasonably relevant, you know, try to keep along at these so that I can go back and search the actual patent database. A good example of this would be now if I were doing this search starting with one, this was a good reference to JD, it pulled for it look at it here, you know, seemed like using, you know, different varieties of keyword searching, you’re gonna call it in the water container attractive reasons mechanisms tethers lots of things like that. This one stood out to me because this is probably large containers for use underwater.
Google just recently started doing something different with their international classes like that, so a good example here would be as you kind of go through the problem, you might read through that suit, you can glean out of it. Here are some of these the classes that were registered for, you know, that word is the patent examiner’s assign names to each, you know, terms it works when you think organize them searches and efficiently themselves so that you can help you, that’s well or to help you do that so no one did it’s kind of ask from them, made a note of these and start looking through them.
Another patent I came across, I’ve come across, you know, the classes associated with 43 fishing trapping, I’m destroying [Music] probably not but I want to look at this would say, you know, you get a fish container underwater, you find something in there back to where we were, this reference search, this one a few things came out of that soon. So another thing it’s good to do with the reference, you know, come across this one, you know, this one pops up through different keywords, you find and that examiner’s like don’t let that they’re very smart and very good at what they do so let them help you. So if you click on the Sutton cited by every, you know, each patent Blaney is part of the prosecution.
You know, examiner’s world cite teachings from those patents against, you know, your application or this previous application those are excellent places to look. You know, one fault-checking the downside of this is that you don’t have to judge the book by its cover because what you get is the title. The star means that it was excited by an examiner not just associated through probably I would sign it if it doesn’t have a star was probably cited through the ideas it was part of the prosecution, the bigger term you’ll submit for you as you do that methods of freezing true pressure container so you’re really looking for something like you just judging the book by its cover as much as I’d like to tell you that there’s a silver bullet with these things sometimes you get there is this particular search is not that way. So what I, what my do here, a device for keeping for cooling and for drilling food it’s gonna be related to this submersible thing an examiner seem to think so as well let’s check it out [Music] downsides of some of these foreign patents like this often don’t get images with them which is a bit challenging and [Music] when I was trying to illustrate it with this one, you know, so and I think JD’s mentioned some of his articles some of the forward-backwards citation searching that’s a well nerd technique, but it’s something that differs from, you know, what we started with keyword searching using classes both USPTO is CPC classifications. I’d recommend using both the best way to over summer as an approach especially with a, you know, a certain invention with a lot of broad features like this one is to try a lot of different approaches and look for some convergence and start to see hey we’re finding using keywords and classes and finding several of the same patents in our queries. So this was you know, reference here that I wanted to point out it’s the you know the mobile device for storing cooling food objects well that looks pretty good let’s check it out where’s this going to go yeah this is so you know what from what we were chef was seeing with the young, the charm you know what does they wo actually stand for it’s the world maybe that’s what not why pellets.
It’s a certain name for the wo but it’s an international law and the general pertains to a lot of different countries that you can file through, oh, so this is a good reference, it’s notable we found this through you know kind of almost like you have to give it a name, some type of double-backwards citation searching but that’s how we got there and I think this was another one JD had it’s part of the search that was a pretty good reference but on you know first thing to come here with it is these are a couple classes I’d probably look at it, yeah this kind of concerns me a little bit less, you know, if I’m picturing this invention being in an ocean but that could be a flaw because, you know, from mechanical functioning I see there’s really no reason this can’t be in the pool or the ocean, so those are all things that you want to have an open mind to as you look through it but this is a pretty good reference and that’s how you might find something through citation searching the classes.
This was last year so 114 256 so from the stepford reference that was pretty strong, you know, they listed class 114 so let’s see what it is chips. Alright, I think really reasonably in on the right continent here so would I, you know, typically do will be good this one only had one 115 114 s so both of these in a while I’m in this class I check them out 256 is floating or semi submersible storage vessel this is maybe where your eyes light up if you want a little bit more the definition on this one you can click that 256 I just did it kind of comes down to structures with your containers of such construction that they’re mainly partially in the water you use I think I like that that much or, you know, that then has that differs from our invention a little bit this actually looks pretty good which is, you know, I think illustrates some of the, you know, we came here looking for 256 but what I found is actually useful is 257 because this device is not intended to be on a floating on top of the wall possibly it would be more underwater so let’s see what you find here first thing you notice is that there’s 95 patents in there so clicking and checking each one of these is probably gonna be pretty tedious this is JD has taught us all a lot about using Boolean search times if you find the right classes hopefully you can keep it simple but [Music]
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So what we’ve done is, you know, drop the 95 or so patents down to 15 that are submersible containers do something with temperature careful you want to try to use, you know, temperatures a better search term here than thermometer because you could have temperature regulation device then we’ll stir for longer there’s all kinds of transducers that can we use to sense temperature that you can describe super vaguely and, you know, those big terms are almost impossible to search by so you want to try to figure out here what’s the correlated word that might be in here next one of my charts food maybe a can try something used to see their subsea fluid storage system you see a lot of these are related to oil extraction and like storage of natural gas compressed gas storage of oil it’s a distinct possibility that those would contain teachings that would anticipate this invention so that’s one thing to take away from that.
So what we’re trying to do here is side if we keep this one spend five ten minutes picking through it analyzing it or throw it back in the sea you know and if you want to be stuff efficiently a lot of doing your own search is going to have to be a guess and check a Tory process so if you go if every you know patent a classic us because when has probable cause to warrant being reviewed but not quite sure I can’t tell what it looks like what would really be cool a picture because then, so like sub seeing more sensors that might be used providing it remote operations this is something I would take note of here you know suppose all the other references we had found were for things that were similar structurally like it’s a, you know, container that you can put on a real you know we found things that have maybe it has a propeller that moves it up and down but we haven’t had one found one yet that does it based on temperature and this is always a real important thing tips you know we found the word temperature in here that’s great but you need to make sure the context is right and that’s part of it that’s gonna be you know because if an examiner is gonna use your invention to try to make an obvious Nisour 103 rejection you has to kind of up there have to be teachings and reasons to connect the two ideas you know so that’s an important thing to try to find and it’s difficult to understand what that might be one thing it’s interesting here you know this seems this is the exact same class but it’s familiar that’s good seems like we’re kind of in right.
I’m not sure if this is movable
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JD any questions you think it will be helpful or useful here I think you’re great I think if we’re going to go in and as you go through these results if you need to go back and if you would normally go back and check the invention disclosure that’d be good to go for a little bit but I think you’ve done a good job yeah because you know anything else that was like you know having trouble finding tools like a key word thing that would go to it so hopefully what that does illustrate some techniques here should actually all this you know think it’s actually you didn’t find anything I mean yeah I mean off the record that I wouldn’t put in the you know the video but you know intervention like this I don’t see a now what I would concern me with this is that things like this are used in oil and gas industries where these people are solving money problems that have substantial economic issues were like substance is a good way to put it you know oil think you spend tens of millions of dollars on systems that do this so that’s how they’re gonna spend a lot of money researching and patenting these things yeah fishermen trying to keep his beer cold you know I don’t see you know a device like this that costs a thousand dollars someone would never try that yeah right well I think yeah it’s a wonderful example you just went through who does that kind of cover the I believe that covers sufficiently the patent research could you go in and do a bit on the non-patent research yeah I have a prep anything they’re just kind of wing it if you don’t take five ten minutes and just talk about on dad sure especially with.
Alright, so it’s also important. Happens a lot of times with inventions that are commercial products. It’s important to be part of a patent, establishing novelty, what the patent is going to be, making sure that you’re the first person to ever think of it or anything that would anticipate someone thinking of this idea. So, I always really like to look at things doing non-patent research aside. It’s as well what is. I like to do this, this is a tough one because there’s not a real clear. It’s a submersible fishing cooler. Pretty sure that anyone else looks at this just gonna call it something different. So, have to try a few different, maybe something that’ll sink it. You know, try to find something here. You need some fishing coolers.
We’re not getting the answer that I want. I like to do with these things [Music]. This is a light that caught my attention. Now, I’m looking for something underwater. I’ll pull up Google, find these by images, and just look for something that looks like what I’m looking for. I saw a couple of patents for this. There’s a lot of things for preserving and processing food, not processing but preserving food underwater, you know, things had to do with storing fish. I saw a lot of Chinese and Japanese patents doing a search. You’ve got some big markets designing similar products. So, you know, not something exactly like it but things that, you know, mechanically functionally trying to take the container but underwater regulate its temperature. That’s used in a lot of applications. That would be my opinion, you know, potentially a extremely challenging field to both search and develop a degree of confidence that, you know, there’s not gonna be a Japanese patent for keeping frozen fish cold underwater that isn’t gonna come off somewhere, you know, and that’s just, you know, anytime you’re innovating in markets that have a lot of economic, you know, people making, you know, they’re very developed markets, this can be challenging here.
Storing a fish surges like this, you know, you can use a lot more. You can use sort of layman’s terms for things as opposed to, you know, trying to figure out what the patent attorney legal because it’s gonna be described. I was going to use to describe those terms. And there’s any caution that gives people with they’re giving, you know, inventors relying on keyword searching is that they’re gonna find they’re going to litter thermometer and not through mister. And I do this stuff every day, and I’m that’s a mistake. I think most other people well. So, that’s an important thing. If there’s almost anything you can take away from this, it’s that you have to do, you know, whatever you call this, you have to depart from that immediately. Like sometimes I’ll get you again really, this is not helpful. And honestly, I’ve never heard of a device like this.
I’ve never heard of a device like this. I don’t really see a person I’m super practical use for the word of keeping a cool old fishing, but I already searched for underwater coolers and nothing came up. I saw a lot of underwater fluid chilling devices, you know, for keeping like, you know, suppose you have a factory orange juice in Japan and you’re like, well, just store this stuff underwater instead of keeping it up, you know, in a tank. I saw some things like that. I came across one patent for an underwater center chiller dot that was kind of interesting. One is an interesting application. This data centers use a ton of electricity trying to keep them cold. So, if you can keep the water out there freezing million bucks millions of dollars computers. It’s a great idea. This was, I think this was one I came across. Yeah, this is maybe one of those examples I was talking about looks like the type that’ll make some type of, you know, rice wine or sake or something like that. You’re storing it underwater, you know, that’s an application that I would think might be related to this particular invention.
But that’s a whole were edible prior art. You can go dig down, and you can probably find something kind of, it comes down to how much time you can little spend on, you know, I were to spend five hours looking for stuff, and someone else comes along, spends 20, they’re gonna find significantly. And that’s just kind of, you know, if you’re gonna go look down every rabbit bowl, you’ll actually find everything you need to just kind of walking through a few of the other ones that I found. You know, consumer products, though. I found this beautiful, to know. I found this beautiful image search just be pretty useful for consumer products. You know, on someone, you know, especially for like homemade arts and crafts type stuff, find things on Pinterest all the time. They’re the exact idea, but neither work for everyone trying to patent on it. So, it’s well, yeah, this is what I was talking about about, you know, if I pull this stuff, this is a pretty interesting idea, you know, likely has some features of that invention. But it’s not the same, but it’s, you know, potentially relevant as Prime’s are, you know, so the same thing with this one, you know, you look at see what classes we have here. Does even though this is, you’re using water to cool something, this has an inner circulatory system the invention doesn’t.
So, you’re probably going to have a lot of patents that are related to that or classes that it’s gonna be noise. This is that same class we saw again, you know, that’s notable. This one looks like, you know, actually typically these 0-0 classes are pretty broad, so those are pretty good to use when you get into the ones that are super duper specific like this, you know, if the descriptions right on, sometimes you got a bull’s eye, but [Music]
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So, what we’ve done is, you know, drop the 95 or so patents down to 15 that are submersible containers, do something with temperature, careful you want to try to use, you know, temperatures a better search term here than thermometer because you could have temperature regulation device then we’ll stir for longer. There’s all kinds of transducers that can be used to sense temperature that you can describe super vaguely and, you know, those big terms are almost impossible to search by so you want to try to figure out here what’s the correlated word that might be in here next one of my charts, food, maybe a can try something used to see their subsea fluid storage system. You see a lot of these are related to oil extraction and like storage of natural gas, compressed gas, storage of oil. It’s a distinct possibility that those would contain teachings that would anticipate this invention. So, that’s one thing to take away from that.
So, what we’re trying to do here is side if we keep this one spend five ten minutes picking through it analyzing it or throw it back in the sea, you know, and if you want to be stuff efficiently a lot of doing your own search is going to have to be a guess and check a Tory process. So, if you go if every, you know, patent a classic US because when has probable cause to warrant being reviewed but not quite sure I can’t tell what it looks like what would really be cool a picture because then, so like subseeing more sensors that might be used providing it remote operations this is something I would take note of here, you know, suppose all the other references we had found were for things that were similar structurally like it’s a, you know, container that you can put on a real you know we found things that have maybe it has a propeller that moves it up and down but we haven’t had one found one yet that does it based on temperature and this is always a real important thing tips you know we found the word temperature in here that’s great but you need to make sure the context is right and that’s part of it that’s gonna be you know because if an examiner is gonna use your invention to try to make an obvious Nisour 103 rejection you have to kind of up there have to be teachings and reasons to connect the two ideas you know so that’s an important thing to try to find and it’s difficult to understand what that might be one thing it’s interesting here, you know, this seems this is the exact same class but it’s familiar that’s good seems like we’re kind of in right.
I’m not sure if this is movable
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JD any questions you think it will be helpful or useful here I think you’re great. I think if we’re going to go in and as you go through these results if you need to go back and if you would normally go back and check the invention disclosure that’d be good to go for a little bit but I think you’ve done a good job yeah because you know anything else that was like you know having trouble finding tools like a key word thing that would go to it so hopefully what that does illustrate some techniques here should actually all this you know think it’s actually you didn’t find anything I mean yeah, I mean off the record that I wouldn’t put in the video but, you know, intervention like this I don’t see a now what I would concern me with this is that things like this are used in oil and gas industries where these people are solving money problems that have substantial economic issues were like substance is a good way to put it you know, oil think you spend tens of millions of dollars on systems that do this. So, that’s how they’re gonna spend a lot of money researching and patenting these things. Yeah, fishermen trying to keep his beer cold, you know, I don’t see you know a device like this that costs a thousand dollars someone would never try that, yeah, right.
Well, I think yeah, it’s a wonderful example you just went through who does that kind of cover the I believe that covers sufficiently the patent research could you go in and do a bit on the non-patent research yeah, I have a prep anything they’re just kind of wing it if you don’t take five ten minutes and just talk about on dad sure especially with the research tools and stuff that they’re using but
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All right, so it’s important to conduct non-patent research alongside patent research, especially for inventions that are potential commercial products. Establishing novelty is crucial for a patent, ensuring that you are the first person to conceive of the idea. In this case, we’re dealing with a submersible fishing cooler, and finding the right search terms is challenging.
I like to use image searches on Google to find similar products or inventions. I came across patents related to preserving and processing food underwater, particularly in Chinese and Japanese markets. These could have relevant teachings for our invention.
Searching for underwater fluid chilling devices, I found patents related to storing fish and other products underwater. The challenge here is the vast amount of information in developed markets. For example, storing frozen fish underwater is a common practice, and finding a related patent could be challenging.
Consumer products are another area to explore. Image searches can be useful, especially for homemade arts and crafts. It’s not uncommon to find similar ideas on platforms like Pinterest, even though not all may have patents.
It’s important to consider alternate embodiments and descriptions in patents. A potential teaching buried in an alternate embodiment could pose a challenge to establishing novelty. Attorneys often analyze these aspects to ensure a robust patent.
Diving into classes can help narrow down relevant patents. In this case, the 0-0 classes are broad, making them useful for initial searches. However, specificity can be found in more detailed classes.
The goal is to find teachings related to specific features of the invention, such as propellers, thermometers, and control systems. Exploring different classes is part of the convergence process, finding the right stadium to locate the desired underwater devices.
Nonetheless, this process is time-consuming, and finding the perfect search terms and classes may require extensive exploration. As an inventor, you should be prepared for a significant investment of time in research or consider hiring professionals.
This example illustrates the complexity of patent research, especially in fields where substantial economic interests are at play, such as oil and gas industries. While a fisherman’s cooler might not face the same research intensity, understanding the depth of exploration required is crucial for any inventor.
In conclusion, non-patent research is an essential companion to patent research, providing valuable insights into similar inventions and market trends. The challenge lies in finding the right search terms, classes, and balancing the time investment required for a thorough exploration.