Before you file any patent application, and in particular a utility patent application, it's a good idea to research the prior art patents to see if your idea has already been invented. Not seeing your idea in the market is not enough... plenty of good, patented ideas never make it to the market, for various reasons.
You want to avoid the situation where a simple patent search would have found an important prior art patent that ends-up being the primary reason a Patent Office Examiner rejects your patent application two to three years from now.
For the money, we think it makes sense to spend 10% of what you would on a non-provisional utility patent application considering that 80-85% of the time, when conducting a search, we find something pretty close.
And even if we don't find anything close, wouldn't you want to know that too? Patent searches are often done not just to determine patentability of your product, but also to see what the competitive landscape looks like.
So what type of patent search makes sense for you? Most people start with a US patent search and then move to a foreign search if the US search doesn't find anything relevant.
A "World-Wide" search includes both US and Foreign searches.
US Patent Search
. Covers U.S. Published Patents and Patent Applications . . .
One week delivery
Covers US Patents back to the 1700's (keyword searched back to 1971, and from those, reference and class/subclass searched back to 1790)
Includes expert opinion of patentability in US
Standard 1-week US search - $499
RUSH 48-hour US search - $699
Foreign Only Patent Search
• European (Granted & Published Applications) • WIPO PCT Publications • Japan (Abstracts only, in English) • German (Granted & Published Applications) • +88 additional world-wide offices, in all over 80MM references
One week delivery
Covers 80MM+ patent citations from 92 different world-wide offices back to 1836
Includes expert opinion of patentability in US
Standard Foreign-Only Search - $250
RUSH 48-hour Foreign-Only Search - $450
World-Wide Patent Search
World-Wide Standard 1-week patentability - $699
World-Wide RUSH 48-hour patentability - $949
What's Included?
All PATENT SEARCHES By QuickPatents Include
Cover Sheet with Search Strategy Used and Researcher's Expert Opinion of Patentability
An "A-List" of the most relevant (up to 30) patent references found
A "B-List" of other related patents that you may find interesting and potentially relevant
Full copies of the A-List patents
You can choose to either receive an email with your search report, or a hard-copy of your search report by priority mail (add'l charge applies). See this sample search report » to see for yourself how detailed our search report is.
