Zero Cost Patent Resources for Inventors

Hello and welcome to this episode of Patent Pending Made Simple. I'm your host, Summer Shaw, and joining me is Jamie Brophy. Jamie, how are you? Hey, Summer. I'm good. How are you? I am doing all right. I am glad to be recording today. It's going to be a little bit different. I feel like we're usually talking about just trying to educate our listeners.

But today's episode, I'm hopeful that we can do something a little bit different and maybe we can give them some resources so that the listeners feel like they are equipped and armed with some additional resources to go out and tackle some The world of, provisional patents and being patent pending and all that good stuff.

What do you think? Yeah, I think that's great. I think we're going to provide a lot of useful information today. There's so many great resources out there for independent inventors and some that you want to stay away from, but I think we're going to provide a lot of great resources today that are very reliable.

And so hopefully people will learn a lot. . Yeah. It's, it is nice that these resources are out there and I'm glad we have them. Found at least some of them. 'cause we try to be a resource to or for independent inventors. But we don't necessarily need to reinvent the wheel on some of these things, right?

So if there are high quality resources that already exist that are accessible, I think it's worthwhile to highlight them and point people to those things. So we're not the sole source of resources and help for independent inventors. Yeah. Definitely, and I think, the top resource that I always recommend to people is the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, which is just uspto.gov.

There's a lot of great resources on there for independent inventors. There's a whole section. That's directed specifically at independent inventors. Have you had a chance to poke around on there at all, Summer? I have. And boy, there is a lot of stuff there. I would have expected that, the Patent Office would leave the inventors out in the cold to fend for themselves when they're prosecuting a patent application or applying for a patent, but it's actually the opposite.

There is so much stuff there that I was like, wow, how are we going to, organize all this information in a easy to access kind of a way. So there's so much stuff there that. It would take us more than an hour to cover everything. Jamie do you want to walk us through maybe what's the top resource that you would recommend, and maybe we can talk about a couple of things that are worthwhile that people should click into and check out.

Yeah, definitely. I'm just going to talk about, how to navigate to what I'm. What we're discussing, if you just go to USPTO. gov, that's for the United States Patent and Trademark Office, so USPTO. gov, and then across the top, there's a few menus, and the one on the left is patents, and then under patents, there are inventor and entrepreneur resources, and then you can.

Yeah, there's a lot. It talks about, just the basics of patent stuff, which is a lot of what we talk about on this podcast. But there's also, first of all, there's information about patent scams, which I think is important to know how to get started on your application, what to know before you apply, get help to apply.

The patent office offers free services. There's an inventor assistance center. I think they also have a list in there of pro bono resources. Let's see what else there's this inventor info chat that sounds really interesting. I don't know that much about it. So yeah, that's just basically what's on the PTO website.

Is there anything you would like to talk about specifically Summer? No, I think that's a that's a good list. The one thing that piqued my interest a little bit that I was not expecting for it to be there, but there is this listing of for patent licensing purposes. So I didn't even know this existed until we started poking around Jamie.

But if you want to license your invention, you can list it at the patent office. There is an official Gazette or a board where you can list patents for sale or license I guess in the official Gazette, there is a 25 listing fee but that may be a great way if you're looking to monetize your invention or license your invention to put it on there.

I'm sure the folks who are. in the business of licensing inventions or purchasing inventions are checking them out and seeing what's available from an innovation perspective. Yeah, that's cool. I wasn't aware of that either. The USPTO website also has a list of licensed practitioners. They have a list of everybody that's registered to practice before the USPTO.

So any. Patent attorneys or patent agents that are active and are registered to practice are listed on the PTO website. Yep, that's right. So you can find licensed professionals that way. There is also this pro bono program, right? So there are law firms and inventors. and nonprofits who offer assistance to inventors on a pro bono basis.

Many of them have requirements that you need to qualify for before you can receive assistance. But those may be worth checking out if you qualify for those programs. And I think there's a specific page for it where you can search for people based on the state that you're in, which is very helpful.

Yeah. So yeah, a lot of good PTO website. I, would definitely recommend starting there. What other resources are out there for independent inventors, Summer? Yeah, so the next one I'd like to talk about is search tools, right? So a big part of being successful with your patent application is doing a good search to see if your invention Meets the requirements or the qualifications to obtain a patent.

Two of them being novelty, which means that nobody should have done it before and non obviousness, which means that it can be an obvious modification of something that already exists. So often, as we've discussed in prior podcasts, Jamie, you'd want to do a search to see if your invention would be considered novel and non obvious over everything that came before your filing date.

So having A good search or a good idea about how to do the search is important. The patent office actually has a pretty robust patent database that you can access and poke around and just try to type in some keywords with, but it is fairly complex and maybe a little cumbersome to use Jamie.

So there are some other tools. What is your go to patent searching resource or database? Yeah, so as far as free patent search tools if I'm just looking for something real quick, my, usually my go to is patents. google. com. It's pretty easy to use and I find that, it gives me pretty good results.

Yeah. I don't do a ton of searching. But usually I'm just looking for something real quick. So yeah, patents. google. com I would say is the main one that I use, but I know you have a couple great ones that you like to use as well. Summer? Yeah, absolutely. And Ian does all of our patent searches and maybe we should have him on the podcast at one point so he can walk people through the search process.

Cause I don't do a lot of searches myself anymore. But But he's pretty knowledgeable. So maybe that's a topic for a future date. But for this podcast episode, the one that I would like to highlight is called PQ AI. I think the website is project pq. ai. They use AI to help you do patent searches, which I think is very helpful for most folks who are not used to or trained in patent searches.

You won't know. All the different layers of searching that you'd have to do. So I like PQAI for that reason. They will do a lot of that stuff in the backend based on a search prompt that you submit. So all you had to submit is a paragraph or two of your invention, and then it will formulate a search query and it will search in the right classes and categories of information.

It's a really nifty tool and it's open source. So anyone can use it. It's a free resource. I like that one. I also like this other tool called Pantzilla the URL is quite long so I'll link it in our show notes but that one does a pretty good job of searching the European patent database and then there's the international patent database called WIPO, W I P O, that is pretty user friendly from a search perspective and helps you do international searching the U.

S. patent database for example will only search the U. S. patent database. So WIPO, and then there's the EPO, the European Patent Office, has a search tool as well, which is pretty user friendly. So I would check those out if you're in the market or trying to do a patent search on your own. Yeah. Oh, that AI one sounds really cool.

I'm going to have to check that out. Yeah. I think, we've talked about this, but with our software that helps inventors write a patent application patent pending made simple, we're planning on hopefully integrating that into our software because I think it's a really cool tool.

Yeah. Oh, that would be really nice to have that integrated into the software. What a great idea. We'll see if that can make it work, right? But I agree. I think it'd be nice. The other nice thing about it would be that, people would not have to do a separate search, right? So you can, submit your answers to our questions to get a patent draft written, and then the same answers could be used to do a search.

So you can have some time efficiency there and kill two birds with one stone, although that's a pretty violent metaphor, but something like that. Yeah, that would be cool. I think it's always a great idea to have a professional search done, at least for starting out purposes, it's a good idea to, know what's out there and do a search on your own and see if you can find anything relevant. To inform what direction you should go with your patent application. Yeah, I think those, all of those are really great search resources. What else besides, so we've talked about the PTO website. We've talked about search tools. Are there any other resources you can think of that, are out there for independent inventors?

Yes. The other big one I think are local inventor groups or inventor clubs. Essentially every major city in the U S has an an independent inventors group. So in San Antonio, for example, there is the Alamo Inventors Club. I recently did a presentation there and I was also invited and did a presentation at the Kansas City Inventors Group.

There are these inventor groups. Everywhere in every major metropolitan city. So I would encourage you to check that out. Most of the folks who run these organization, these are nonprofits they volunteer to run them. So it's really a labor of love for them. And they are usually veterans of the patenting process and the licensing process.

So they're just a wealth of knowledge. So I really liked that. It's a free resource. Pre pandemic, actually the Alamo inventors group would, bring in pizza every other Wednesday and, people would get together and talk and, you build a nice community around it. I remember they used to also go to Cracker Barrel after the meetings and you'd have.

Really lively discussion about patents and licensing. And sometimes those would stretch out to like midnight. So it's, it can be a fun group and a great community. When you're inventing something, I think by definition, you're doing something new, right? That nobody else is doing. And it can be a lonely experience.

Endeavor where you may have other people who think you're, maybe doing something that you shouldn't be doing or, folks mostly think that you're going to fail and there's a high likelihood of failure. Arming yourself with a community of supportive individuals can help you and hopefully guide you and mentor you through that process is really helpful.

And if you're a veteran inventor, I think passing down that knowledge and helping new inventors with their product inventions is also pretty gratifying, I'm sure. And it sounds like fun. They're shutting down the Cracker Barrel at midnight. That's like my kind of group right there. Yeah, I love these inventors groups because, there's so much for inventors to think about besides just the patent. Patents are our department, the subject of this podcast, but there's so many other things for them to think about. So I think these inventor groups are a great resource because they talk about everything that inventors need to take into consideration.

So yeah, I love those. Thanks. and they also bring in the speakers. I know all of the inventor groups bring in new speakers on a monthly or a bimonthly basis. So they, the folks who run these organizations have a network and they talk about who needs it. Are the best practitioners or a support organizations or individuals who can help and guide inventors in their journey.

So they're actually a really good as sourcing if you need help not just from patent attorneys, but from other professionals the folks who speak at these organizations are usually wedded and recommended by others. So it's a great way to just meet other folks in the space who may help you in your journey. Yeah, that's awesome. Sounds like a great one. , so anything else, Summer? Are there any other resources that you typically recommend? Yeah we talked about this a little bit in our USPTO section, but there are law schools and non profits who help inventors as well. So when I was in law school, we used to have this pro bono clinic where we helped independent inventors with their inventions.

I had I remember being in law school. I helped this guy who built a knife for cutting cheese curds protect his invention. So that was, it was great experience for me, but it was I think he got a really good patent out of that process and hopefully some good education out of that process.

So check out your local law school. They may have pro bono clinics or legal clinics that may help you and assist you with your IP or patenting needs. And then I mentioned the nonprofits. A lot of them are listed on the USPTO website. If you do some searching they're also very good. They usually act like a matchmaker.

Attorneys who are interested in providing pro bono services will sign up with these organizations. And then whenever there is a new person who needs help. The organization will send out an email and say, Hey, this person needs help with this technology. It, would somebody like to help on a pro bono basis?

And then usually you'll have several, several attorneys volunteering to help that one client, which is really nice. Wow. Yeah. That sounds like a great resource as well. Wow. So we've gone over a lot of them. Does that cover it or is there anything else? Oh one more thing that I would recommend is a book every time I have a client who calls or a prospective client who calls needs help with the patent licensing process, I always send them to this book called One Simple Idea.

And the author author's name is Stephen Key. He's written a lot of books on patent licensing and he's licensed a ton of products himself. He's very experienced. He's been through the patent litigation process. So I've had some conversations. We actually, Steven and I wrote a couple of, co wrote a couple of articles together on patents and licensing process.

He's very knowledgeable but I would, I highly recommend you check out this book called One Simple Idea. It's a great primer or introduction into the world of patent licensing, and it walks you through that process from start to finish so you can start strategizing and start figuring out what you're getting yourself into before you embark down that road.

It's nice to see how other people have done it and what the best practices are. Yeah, absolutely. Another great resource. So yeah, we've gone over a lot of them. I don't want to leave out our website though. Like we, our website is there as well for people to submit questions or ideas for future episodes.

So do we want to shout that out Summer? Yeah, let's do that. Our website is outlierpatentattorneys. com slash patentpending slash podcast. But really anywhere on the website you can, leave comments and learn about the patent process some more. We have a blog section or an insight section.

We cover a lot of different topics related to provisional patent applications, which might be of interest, but of course our podcast, each podcast episode has its own webpage and you can leave us a comment there, or you can leave us a comment on YouTube or on Spotify. We started.

Experimenting with polls and questions within the Spotify app. So you can ask us questions there or leave us a voicemail. All of those are great ways to interact with us and great ways to tell us what you would like for us to cover so that we can help you in your inventorship journey as well.

Awesome. Okay. I think we covered a lot of ground today. We went through a lot of great resources for our independent inventor listeners. And I think we covered everything. What do you think, Summer? Yeah, I think we did. Yeah, there is a lot of stuff out there. And be, arming yourself with the, with these tools and education, I think will make your journey through the patent world hopefully a little bit smoother.

Yeah. Definitely. Okay. I'll talk to you next time, Summer. Yeah. Thanks, Jamie.

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