Searching Patents And Trademarks On The Internet

Many of our clients have found it very helpful to be able to search for patents on the Internet themselves. Both the U.S. Patent Office database at http://www.uspto.gov and the IBM patent database at http://www.patents.ibm.com offer full text U.S. patents with drawings. You can search by key words, by inventor, by patent owner, and so forth. In some cases, we have found these databases to be more helpful than the databases for which we are paid subscribers. The IBM database even includes access to European, Japanese, and other foreign publications.

While we would not suggest that an on-line search should substitute for a professional search, it can be a very helpful tool for conducting preliminary searches and for looking up patents for which you have the patent number or the inventor or company name.

Federal trademark applications and registrations have also recently been put online at the uspto.gov web site. The Internet is also a good place to do a search for common law trademark uses, by looking for websites and phone directory listings that use the mark. Again, many of our clients have found it beneficial to conduct preliminary searches themselves using these resources.