Now that you’re familiar with the basics of running a patent search, you can begin refining your searches to be more specific. Covered in this article are three ways of doing that:

1) Searching patents by name

2) Searching patents by keyword

3) Searching patents by abstract

Before diving in, please note that no one of these methods is necessarily better than the others. It depends on the patent you’re searching for. Offered are some basic rules for choosing when to use each method. In fact, in most cases, it’s probably best to run a search using all of these methods – name, keyword, and abstract – just to be sure you aren’t overlooking anything. With that said, let’s begin with searching for patents by name.

(As done in all our patent search articles, we’ll be using Google Patent Search for all demonstrations. It can be much easier than using the USPTO’s search tools!)

Searching Patents by Name

Searching patents by name is most effective when you know or at least have a rough idea of what that name is. We can apply this to an example. Let’s say you believe you have invented the electric guitar. In this case, you can safely run a patent search for the name “electric guitar” and see if anybody else has already patented it, assuming there’s really nothing else it could be called.

So, where to begin? First, you need to click the “Advanced Search” link on Google Patent Search.

Once clicked, you will be taken to the “Advanced Search” screen. This is where you instruct Google to only search using whatever patent name you type in. To keep our example, we demonstrated how one would go about searching for patents with “electric guitar” in the name:

Google Patent Search refers to the name of the patent as its “title”, but just know that they mean the same thing and type the name you want to search for into the title box as shown above. When you’re done, click the “Google Search” button at the top of the screen to see the search results.

The search results will not look this way at first; rather, you will get a rather unhelpful-looking list of plain search results that just say “Electric Guitar” and nothing else. To get the view pictured above, you just need to select “Thumbnails” from the “View as” menu. Once you do this, you will see drawings of each patent, and have the ability to see quick information snippets of any one you hover your mouse over. From there, you are free to click on any patent that grabs your attention and get all the available information (abstract, claims, drawings, date issued, inventor name, etc.) by clicking on it.

This process can be repeated for any patent name you wish to search for! We will now move on to searching for patents by keyword.

Searching Patents by Keyword

In a perfect world, we would know the exact name of the patent being searched for and finding it would be as simple as keying in its name. Unfortunately, there are many situations in which this is not possible. For example, what if you invented something that doesn’t have an obvious name – say, a new, more puncture-resistant bicycle tire that uses a special new alloy to stay intact on top of rocks and rough terrain? It would be tough to compress all of that into a pithy, two or three word name. In these cases, you will probably need to search for patents by keyword.

Like searching patents by name, your first stop is Google Patent Search’s “Advanced Search” screen. Once there, turn your attention to the top of the page covered in blue. These fields are where you specify which keywords you want Google to look for in the patent database. Keeping our example, we’ll search for the keywords “bicycle tire.”

Again – click “Google Search” when you’re done, and adjust the “View as” menu on the page that follows to “Thumbnail.” You should then see something like this:

The results page looks much the same as when you search for patents by name, but with an important difference. Because you searched for keywords and not an exact name, these results contain all patents that have anything to do with bicycle tires. That means you’ll need to spend a bit more time preening through them as you would if you were searching for an exact name. This page, for example, has everything from bicycle tire treads to bicycle tire inflation systems. Keep searching through these until you find the patent you’re looking for. (Of course, if you don’t see a patent for something that you are inventing, this would be preferable to finding it!)

When you see a patent that looks relevant or interesting, click on it to learn more.

We will now turn our attention to searching by abstract.

Searching Patents by Abstract

Very simply, a patent’s abstract is an exact description of what the patent literally is; that is, the exact mechanisms, motions, moving parts, or physical things protected by the patent. This is very important information! All patent searches (including by name or keyword) should include reading the abstracts of patents that catch your attention. Only by doing so will you know, for sure, what the patent in question does or does not cover.

For example: shown below is the abstract of one of the bicycle tire patents we just looked at in the searching by keyword example.

When you click on a patent in the search results, you are taken to a page like this one containing more information about it. The opening paragraphs of the abstract can be found here. However, to read the entire thing, you have to click the “Abstract” link atop the page. Doing so will pull up the entire, scanned-in abstract that is on file with the USPTO (shown below.)

Only by carefully reading the abstract can you know if a particular patent fits the description of what you were searching for. Luckily, this is rather easy, and the process just explained can be repeated for any patent you want to find the abstract for. Simply search for a patent by name or keyword, click on those that look interesting, and click “Abstract” on the page that follows.

Best of luck, and be sure to read the other patent searching articles on PatentHelpNow.com!

Running a search on already-issued patents is great, but that alone may not be thorough enough. The ideal patent search includes both issued patents and patent applications – that is, patents that have been applied for, but not yet issued. But how can you do this? Surely you cannot just walk into the USPTO offices and peek over the shoulder of inventors who are filling out their patent applications…or can you? Thanks to the Internet, you can now visit the USPTO website and search through patent applications, as well as already-issued ones. Let’s learn how.

The first step is visiting Google Patent Search at the following URL: http://www.google.com/patents.

If you read our article on running a patent search, you may already be familiar with this page. However, you’ll need to access a special section of it in order to search for patent applications. For that, you’ll want to click “Advanced Patent Search”, as shown below.

This takes you to an advanced search screen where you can specify that you only want to search applications, not already-granted patents. Once here, simply type in the nature of the patent applications you want to search for (we used “guitar strings” as an example) and check the box marked “Applications.”

Of course, you can refine your patent application search even more from this same screen. For example: let’s say you want to only search patent applications that were filed between September 2008 and January 2009. This would be achieved by using the drop-down menus next to the “Filing Date” option (shown below.)

If you have a specific patent application number in mind, you can key it into the box labeled “Patent Number.” If you know the title of the patent application or the name of the inventor, there are boxes for that information as well. Once you have customized the search page with all of the things you want to search for, simply click “Google Search” at the top of the page.

What will follow is a page of search results listing the patent applications that match what you searched for. However, we realize that the “raw text” look and feel of these results might not be the most intuitive way to look at them. Luckily, you can use the “View As” menu at the top of the page to change to “Thumbnail” view (shown below.)

Thumbnail view allows you to see the drawings for each patent application, as well as get brief snippets of information by hovering your mouse cursor over them. Simply click any patent application you are interested in to learn more. We’ll click “string bender for electric guitar” to demonstrate.

Here, you can discover just about anything about the patent application you clicked on, including the application number, when the application was filed, and who filed it. This information could be useful in any number of situations. For example, if you want to license someone’s invention, you will know who that someone is. If you want to know how old a patent application is, you will know for certain. And if you simply want to know if the patent is at all similar to the one you wish to file, reading the abstract and the claims will tell you.

If any of the terms we’ve used in this article were unclear, or you simply want to learn more about running your own patent search, browse the other articles and help resources on PatentHelpNow.com!

Running a patent search is critical for any inventor with serious ambitions of success. After all, there’s no point investing years of your life or thousands of dollars into something that’s already been done by somebody else, and a patent search is the best way to make sure that doesn’t happen. This was not always easy, however

It used to be that the only way to run a patent search was to pay a patent attorney to do it for you. Prior to the Internet, these attorneys basically had a monopoly on patent searches because they were the only ones with access to US Patent & Trademark Office files. The Internet has changed this dramatically. For one, you can visit the USPTO’s website and run a patent search yourself, for free. If you want to search issued patents (patents that people already have), click “Quick Search” or “Advanced Search” under the “Issued Patents” section.

The only problem with the USPTO’s website is that it is not exactly the most user-friendly resource out there. Luckily, there’s a much easier-to-use alternative: Google Patent Search. Like the USPTO, Google Patent Search lets you browse through all patents on file for free. Unlike the USPTO, however, Google makes this process as easy and painless as the Google search engine itself. For those of you who have never run a patent search from the USPTO site, this is a serious improvement!

You can access Google Patent Search at the following URL: http://www.google.com/patents

Here’s how it works. First, visit the URL above. Then, just like you would search for something on Google.com, type in what best describes the patent you’re looking for. For example, let’s say you thought you were the first person to invent the electric guitar, and you wanted to run a search to see if someone invented it already. You would type “electric guitar” into the search box as shown below. Then click “Search Patents.”

Following is a page of search results showing patents that match what you searched for. (Unfortunately for you, the electric guitar has been invented and re-invented many times over!) At this point, you can click on any patent that looks interesting or relevant. We’ll click the first one on the page.

This brings us to a much more detailed page about the electric guitar. You can read about the patent’s claims, learn when it was filed and issued, the inventor who has it, who the patent examiner was, the patent number, and more. You can also click “Read This Patent” to see the actual, scanned-in patent that is on file with the USPTO. Scrolling down will also enable to you to see other patents that have referenced this one – in this case, many other patents have.

This process is repeatable for virtually any patent search you might want to run. With some practice and effort, you can usually do all of your patent searching by yourself, for free, without having to hire any attorneys or search services to assist you. We will be covering this topic in great detail on PatentHelpNow.com as well.

Stay tuned for our other articles on searching by name, abstract, and keyword!

PatentHelpNow.com is a website dedicated to providing inventors with free patent help. You can contact us at: PatentHelpNow@gmail.com