
Phase 3: Patenting
Pro Se &
Pro Bono
Patent
Search
time to go through them. This
process should take you at least
a week or two.
To scan through each patent
quickly, take a look at the
images first. If the image
doesn't remotely resemble
anything like your idea and you
know for a fact it’s not what
you’re making, you can move
on. If you have no idea what to
make of the image or it does
slightly resemble your idea,
then take a look at the “claims”
section of the patent to see
what they claimed as their idea.
Every time you come across
something that is similar or has
similar properties, save it in a
bookmarks folder so you can
refer back to it when writing
your own patent.
If you haven’t found anything
yet, broaden your search. It
would totally suck to find out
your idea is not patentable.
If you do find that someone has
already patented your idea,
there is still hope. It all comes
down to the “claims” section.
The claims determine what
makes the invention unique. All
you need to be able to patent
an idea is to include at least
one claim that is unique from
another idea and it must be
non-obvious. So if something
already exists, get creative and
add something important or
change your invention to be
unique from the pre-existing
patents.
Pro Bono is the fancy legal term for
"free attorney". It’s worth looking into
to see if you qualify. It could be huge
to have free help through the patent
process. You can find free Pro Bono
help through the USPTO website here.
Pro Se is the fancy legal term for "I’ll
file on my own". So if you don’t have
an attorney through this process, make
sure to file the patent as Pro Se. Also,
you’ll find that when you speak with
USPTO representatives, they tend to
be much more helpful when you
mention that you are filing Pro Se.
To make sure that a patent of your
idea doesn’t already exist. You need to
conduct a patent search. This means
searching through the USPTO library
of patents to see what similarities
come up.
You can do this through Goo-
gle.com/patents where you can easily
see every patent that has ever been
published. To do this, make a list of
every keyword or phrase that can be
associated with your idea, and enter
them individually into the search bar.
There will be thousands of patents that
pop-up and you’ll need to take your
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