if you have an invention and you're
thinking about getting a patent one of
the very first things that you need to
find out is is the invention new and
pretty much the only way that that's
going to happen basically to figure out
whether your invention is new is
somebody's going to have to do a search
and one of the things I like to let
people know is that getting started with
this is free and you don't most have to
be crazy or have somebody else who's
going to handle it for you just
automatically for you to just go to an
attorney blind and have no idea whether
your invention is new or not the thing
that I want to teach you is how to do a
quick search and get some real quality
results really not taking a lot of time
and the best way to do that that I know
of is to use Google patents it's simple
it's a lot like the regular Google
search in that you put something in
there just a string of a few terms and
you're going to get some results that
are pretty worthwhile and pretty quick
to go to Google patents all you have to
do is go into a search bar in your
browser type patents docked google.com
and it's going to bring you to the page
that you see right here and this page is
really just the simple search page for
Google patents you can do two different
types of search simple search and
advanced search if you click down here
at the bottom it has the advanced search
and it's going to bring you to a search
page that has a lot more options and you
can do a lot more complicated work in
that anytime you want to toggle one way
or the other if you're an advanced
search and you want to go back to simple
search just click on the icon up here
it'll bring you back to Google patents
if you want to go to advanced search go
back down click advanced search but this
is really a tutorial for a simple search
so what you're going to want to do is
say you're searching for a toy of some
sort just start typing console
if I'm gonna use a four concept
invention and let's just say you have a
soccer ball a basket stick and light
okay and you can see there's this little
grayed out box here and it shows you how
Google is interpreting just the string
of words that you've put there here it
sees soccer ball and it thinks soccer
ball is not just soccer the game and
ball any type of ball that's
interpreting it as a soccer ball so you
kind of get what you get when Google
parses your search strings in a simple
search but it does a pretty decent job
and it'll generally only pair together
terms that really seem like they go
together so the thing that you'll do
type in your string of four concepts in
this case and click on that all of your
viewing of search results is going to be
in this advanced search type setting so
don't worry about that what you want to
do once you get all those concepts in
there is browse those results so you can
go up and down looking depending on
whether the thing that you're looking at
is particularly visual you may focus on
the images here or you may see and try
to determine what say the soccer ball if
you look at the word soccer ball as it
is highlighted in these results you may
look for a particular context the main
idea that you want to accomplish here is
to find a single piece of prior art or
multiple pieces of prior art that are
very close to what it is that you've
invented so you scroll through and you
look if you find something that's really
close write it down write down the
patent number the next thing that you
want to do and you can go as deep as you
want you can
there's pages and pages up here it says
there's 816 results so if you want to
you can go through every single one of
those results and you'll get value out
of that
one thing Google does sort these it
takes all of those terms and it tries to
decide what is most relevant so as you
go through these results you're going to
get if Google has done the sorting
correctly progressively less and less
valuable results as you go through and
if you're on page 25 you're probably
going to be seeing results that are
significantly less valuable than what
you saw in the first page you never know
there may be some nuggets that are
hidden 2530 pages deep okay so that's
the concept do a search go through the
results once you feel like you're not
getting quality progress anymore go back
here and up on the top left side you see
all of these terms and one of the things
I want to encourage you to do is that
the closest reference may or may not
have every single concept that you have
so you have all these four concepts
together that's a pretty good search
because it's got the four concepts it's
the main thing that you're looking for
but one thing you may want to do is get
rid of one of those concepts because if
there's a game that has all of those
features and not light just click click
the X get rid of it and all of a sudden
you're going to get a different set of
results there may be a great number of
results that are in common but you're
going to get a different result set so
then you can go back in here and put
light again and then another easy search
is just to get rid of another one that
makes if you go through and eliminate
one by one each element so you do a
search with eliminating each element
that's four additional searches that
could potentially give you quality
results and those deeper searches in
this case any
you're eliminating something you're
doing a broader search than the original
search another thing that you can do is
go and broaden your search a different
way so if you go with the basket and you
want to add some different concepts add
some say maybe your basket could be hoop
and then if you want to add another one
press tab and then say maybe it could be
a cup and press tab so that goes ahead
and registers and comes up with search
results associated with that and then
what you have is that particular group
of search terms are broadened out so
it's going to increase the number of
results that you get and it's going to
change the total composition of the
results so this may be something that
you want to look for you really want to
focus on those critical features and you
can add synonyms which broadens out your
search or you can add additional search
concepts every time if you're on light
and you press Enter I'm sorry if you
press Enter you get down and you have
another concept and you can put TOI and
that it just keeps narrowing the more
you put in here every time you press
ENTER and you bring in another level
you keep getting narrower and narrower
results and that's how you do some
simple searching is put some new terms
in take some terms out do a little
broadening do a little narrowing and I
think that if you do that it's just a
couple of simple concepts and you should
get a really good start for an idea of
whether your invention is new or not you
can also get professional searching done
later but if you can spend twenty
minutes or an hour on this and before
you start spending money to ask an
attorney or get a search done it'll just
give you a really good start