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Questions & Answers

No, a patent search is not a requirement before filing a provisional patent application although it is a highly recommended first step taken by most inventors. As so, you should make sure a good search is performed before starting a patent application, done either by yourself, someone else, or through us. Any corporation filing a patent application would do a patent search before doing so and as individual inventors and small businesses, we want to mimic these strategies. The reason for doing a search is twofold: First, you want to get an idea of patentability. If someone has done something similar already and your chances of patentability are low, don’t waste any more time and money moving forward with a patent application. Second, and more importantly, you want to learn from existing invention. Even though nobody has done an invention exactly the same as yours, you want to study even the similar inventions because these similar inventions are your competition, so to speak. By studying these similar inventions, you can determine how to work around them, invent around them, and how to make your invention more unique in light of these similar inventions. Then, once you maximize your uniqueness, file the patent application so that your invention will have the best chances of eventual patent success when you convert to a non-provisional patent application.