How do i know if a patent already exists [Videos]

Last updated : Aug 6, 2022

Written by : Jamika Caci

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How do i know if a patent already exists

Is my invention already patented?

There are Three Steps to Discover Whether an Idea is Patented Already. Go to the official website of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Use the "Full-Text and Image Database" search to verify any present patent applications and pictures. You can find filed applications and pictures for patents filed after 1975.

Can you patent something that already exists?

Can you patent an existing product? No, you cannot get a patent on an existing product because it does not meet: the novelty requirement and. the inventorship requirement.

What happens if you patent something that already exists?

Taking something that already exists and finding a new use for it is considered an invention, and worthy of a patent. This patent does not cover the old product, instead it grants a patent on using the old product in a new way.

How long does a patent last?

A U.S. utility patent, explained above, is generally granted for 20 years from the date the patent application is filed; however, periodic fees are required to maintain the enforceability of the patent.

Do patents expire?

Patent Expiration Utility patents expire four, eight, and 12 years after issuance of the patent if the maintenance fees are not paid at these points in time. The patent actually expires at 3.5 years, 7.5 years, and 11.5 years, but there is a six-month grace period in which to pay the maintenance fee.

What things Cannot be patented?

literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works.
a way of doing business, playing a game or thinking.
a method of medical treatment or diagnosis.
a discovery, scientific theory or mathematical method.
the way information is presented.
some computer programs or mobile apps.

Can I produce and sell an already patented product?

The U.S. Supreme Court in a recent ruling has opined on the rights of a purchaser to use and resell patented products. The patent system give the patent owner the right to exclude others from making, using, and selling the patented invention, for the life of the patent.

How much does patenting cost?

A patent can cost from $900 for a do-it-yourself application to between $5,000 and $10,000+ with the help of patent lawyers. A patent protects an invention and the cost of the process to get the patent will depend on the type of patent (provisional, non-provisional, or utility) and the complexity of the invention.

Can you sell your patent?

Selling a patent allows the inventor to generate income that will help pay the bills or finance other promising ideas. Selling a patent outright also eliminates the huge financial outlay required to start up a business based on a new product.

Why is Coca Cola not patented?

The reason why there's no patent on it is to ensure the recipe remains undisclosed. A patent is only good for 20 years, which means that after that, the recipe becomes available to the public. The original formula was patented in 1893, but the recipe changed over the course of time and it was never patented again.

What are the three types of patents?

What kind of patent do you need? There are three types of patents - Utility, Design, and Plant. Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof.

What happens after 20 years of a patent?

Hence, the life span for a patent in India is 20 years from the date of filing the patent application. You simply cannot extend the life of the patent. After its lifespan expires, the invention no longer enjoys patent protection and the invention becomes a part of the public domain.

How many times can you renew a patent?

Can patents be renewed? U.S. patents issue for fixed terms and generally cannot be renewed. A U.S. utility patent has a term of 20 years from its earliest effective, non-provisional U.S. filing date.

What is an abandoned patent?

When a patent application is abandoned, prosecution stops and the application will not mature into an issued patent. As a consequence, the patent applicant will not obtain a patent grant, which would otherwise provide federal rights to preclude others from practicing the invention sought to be patented.

What qualifies a patent?

Requirements for Patentability. The five primary requirements for patentability are: (1) patentable subject matter, (2) utility, (3) novelty, (4) nonobviousness, and (5) enablement.

What all things you can patent?

Nearly anything can be patented. Machines, medicines, computer programs, articles made by machines, compositions, chemicals, biogenetic materials, and processes, can all be the subject matter for a United States patent.

Can you get a patent for an idea?

Many people ask: can ideas be patented? The short answer is no. Unfortunately, despite what you may have heard from late night television commercials, there is no effective way to protect an idea with any form of intellectual property protection. Copyrights protect expression and creativity, not innovation.

Can someone copy my patent?

Patented products have legal protection. No one can legally copy or recreate your patented invention. If they do, you can sue them. You cannot sue someone just because your product says "patent pending" on it.

Can patented products be copied?

So, the answer to the above question would be yes, one can sell your patented inventions in other countries. He just cannot manufacture, import, distribute, or sell patented products in countries only where the invention is patented.

What is a poor man's patent?

A poor man's patent is essentially writing out a description of your invention and then mailing that written description to yourself. This postmarked envelope supposedly acts to create the date of your invention as the date this written description was postmarked.

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Comment by Lura Saunders

hi i'm jubin dana with dana legal services and in the video today we're going to talk a little bit about a question that a potential new client recently reached out to us and asked us which was hey i found something on the internet as i was searching patents that seemed to cover my idea it's an issued patent it belonged to a third party and it had been issued for almost 10 years and the question they asked was well can i still go make my idea and how does this impact it so here's the basic answer and this is what we told him in order to identify whether this patents are concerned we have to look at all the claims of the patent we have to try to understand what those claims mean and then we have to look at your product to see if your product includes each and every limitation of that claim or each and every feature of that claim once we do that we can make a very accurate determination as to whether or not there is an infringement issue then the next question they asked was well given that this patent is out there and i have an idea if there's a difference between my idea and the patent claims can i go get a patent on my idea and the answer that question is a little bit different because in order to determine whether there's infringement we look at every feature of the claim and we look at your product and to see if there's a match up so that every feature of the claim appears in your product in order to determine if something is novel and can be patented what we look for is whether there's a disclosure out there anywhere out there that discusses your idea so this patent that he was looking at may or may not have discussed all of the features of his invention so he's possibly in a position to go get a patent on his invention so number one if there's infringement we have to look at your product and we have to look at the patent in order to determine whether you can get a patent to issue we have to look at your idea and whether all the features of your idea are disclosed somewhere out there in other words it's possible to be infringing a patent yet still get a patent to issue in your name for your idea so remember the reason the case for that is that patents are negative rights we discussed that in a video which you can link up to i mean we put a link down there for you to click so you can learn a little bit about patent infringement and what those things are and patent novelty and how to get a patent we discuss those in other videos but this video the specific question being asked was hey i found the patent am i infringing it well we can do the analysis and tell you that at the same time we can also tell you whether or not you can go get or at least file a patent application to get your idea patented i'm drew ben dana with dana legal services if you have any questions or need some clarification give us a call here's our contact info have a great day

Thanks for your comment Lura Saunders, have a nice day.
- Jamika Caci, Staff Member

Comment by mithmelloniel8

so how do you know if your idea is already patented it's actually a pretty difficult question to answer and kind of more complex than people realize and this video is going to give you all the details on that stick around we are starting right now so for those of you who are new here my name is dylan adams i'm a patent attorney and author of the best-selling book patents demystified which is an insider's guide to protecting ideas and inventions used by inventors entrepreneurs and startups worldwide including at top universities like harvard stanford and mit you might also recognize me from my appearance on cnbc's hit show the profit with marcus lemonis so this channel is all about giving you insider tips on protecting ideas and adventures that i use with my clients every day so be sure to subscribe the channel for more on patents and startups all right let's go ahead and get right into it so when people ask the question is my idea already patented it's important to unpack that question because people are usually asking one or both of a couple of questions and really the analysis to answer these questions are completely different so when people ask is my idea already patented they're asking hey am i going to be prevented from doing something because there's already a patent out on something similar to my idea or invention okay so the first is you know is my in is my idea going to be patentable and that's patentability okay so the other question is is my idea would it infringe on somebody else's patent and those are completely different things patent infringement is completely different than patentability and what i'm going to explain to you is the difference between those two things and then also answer the questions you know you know how do you determine whether something is infringing how do you determine whether something is patentable and be sure to watch until the end because i'm going to give you some free resources that you can use today to look up patent applications issued patents and prior art that's going to help you determine these things so let's start with the first question is is your idea will that infringe on somebody else's patent okay now again that's very different than patentability so we're starting with infringement so infringement requires that you infringe the claims of an issued and enforceable patent so so this is very different than patentability because infringement requires you you to be infringing an actual issued and enforceable patent and how you get an issued enforceable patent a lot of people don't realize that so you have to file a non-provisional patent application that application waits in line for one to three years an examination process goes on between the applicant and the examiner and hopefully the examiner is convinced that what the applicant has is new and non-obvious over the prior art and then will allow the application an issue fee is paid and then the application grants as a patent so you can't infringe a pending patent application and patent applications only last 20 years from the filing date of the non-provisional typically you know plus or minus sometimes but that's sort of a good assumption about 20 years so only once an application has granted as a patent and then as long as the term is is in force that's the only time when you can actually infringe somebody else's patent okay so that's in contrast to patentability patentability that relates to the examination process so that so you file again you file a patent application it waits in line for one to three years and then the examination process goes on with the examiner so if you file your patent application the examiner is going to do a prior art search when the examination process begins and what the examiner is going to determine is whether the claimed invention is new and non-obvious over the prior art that's already out there before you filed your patent application so yes that could be issued patents kind of like with with infringement but prior art is so much broader than just issued patents it can include pending patent applications that have published whether or not those pending patent applications have issued as a patent or whether they're whether they went abandoned and they never issued or and are never going to issue but it can also include any sort of technology disclosure it could be blog posts it could be youtube videos it could be scientific papers it could be product catalogs really any sort of technology disclosure is going to be prior art and that's why it's essential that you understand the difference between patentability which relates to prior art and the patent examination process compared to infringement which relates to a product compared to an issued an enforceable patent so then how do you answer these questions so let's first start off with patentability and again that's relating to prior art that's the determination that the examiner is going to be making whether the invention you have claimed in your patent application is new and non-obvious compared to any sort of prior art which is a broad spectrum of things so to determine patentability the best thing to do is to do a patent or prior art search there are very similar sorts of things a patent search that's just going to be focusing on prior art that is issued patents or patent publications and i would say that's 95 of the time what the rejections are going to be based on during the examination process and that's why some people will call it a a patent search because those are the sometimes the easiest things to do a search on and so a prior search may just focus on patents whereas you can look at a do a general prior art search with you can you can look at product catalogs you can look at blog posts you can look videos you can really open up the world of potential prior to a lot of different things instead of just issued patents or published patent applications so doing a prior art search or a patent search is actually pretty difficult there is a lot of stuff out there and it's not really easy to determine what's relevant and what's not you people think well there's keywords that you can search and yeah that's that's possible in a lot of ways and yeah you can search by classification and search for things that are similar but a lot of times there's a lot of irrelevant stuff in there and you can spend a lot of time uh searching for things that are completely uh irrelevant and it can be hard to find things that are actually on point to what you're actually doing and that's one of the unfortunate things about the patent system people want to say well i want to know if my invention is patentable or not but it's really difficult to figure that out especially for more complex inventions things that have a lot of elements it's really hard to do an effective priority search on things also there's the issue that like i said earlier patents are held in secret by default for 18 months from their their earliest priority date so there's a lot of prior art that's very very relevant that being pending patent applications that you may not even be able to find wh

Thanks mithmelloniel8 your participation is very much appreciated
- Jamika Caci

About the author

Jamika Caci

I've studied biophysics at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin and I am an expert in school psychology. I usually feel geeky. My previous job was travel writer (journalist) I held this position for 21 years, I love talking about baseball and rappeling. Huge fan of Drew Barrymore I practice badminton and collect books and periodicals.

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