A patent is all about protection for your
intellectual property. The United States provides patents to give inventors the
right “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling
their invention throughout the United States or importing their invention into
the United States.”
Every country can grant a patent which
would govern that property in that country. It is conceivable that a patent
granted in the U.S. or Canada doesn’t necessarily offer protection against
infringement in a country like China or Russia.
Still, it is advisable for a business that
has a piece of intellectual property to have
it patented in as many countries as possible.

Clearing
the Field
The first obvious benefit of a Google patent search is to see if
somebody beat you to the punch. In other words, has your brilliant idea already
been developed? This is a search that really should be conducted once the plans
for an item are ready to go to the prototype stage. If you find that your idea
has been patented you’ll either have to rethink it entirely or scrape the
project. Better to learn that in the early stages of development.
Borrowing
Innovations
Suppose you’re in the kind of business that
needs to create a machine to make the perfect widget. You’re really selling the
widget but it has to be mass produced to be cost effective. That special
machine you design to make the widget could be patented. However, you might
find that another business has a similar machine you can adapt. There’s no need
to go down the expensive patent review process when you can license
the right to use that technology from the original patent holder. Remember,
you want to get to your “widget” and the most affordable and stress free path
to that goal is the way to go.
Getting
Inspiration
There aren’t a lot of secrets when it comes
to granting a patent. If you’re working through a challenging design you might
do a patent search for similar products to see how other inventors overcame
their hurdles. Who knows? You could be inspired to take your idea in a new
direction that no one has thought of.
Inventor
411
It could be that you’re so impressed with a
particular product or piece of intellectual property that you want to know more
about the originator of that idea. The patent search will let you trace the
inventor and find out what other ideas they’ve worked on.
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