In order to file a patent you must make a choice. This is whether to hire a lawyer to file a patent or to do it on your own. In hiring a lawyer to help you file a patent you should be ready to spend money. Patent lawyer could charge a minimum of $5,000. But the process on how to file a patent remains the same whether you hire a lawyer or not.

Patent Search is done to determine if the proposed invention indeed meets the statutory conditions of patentability. The Patent Search was used to be limited to the Patent Search Office database records of prior patents and publications. But the Internet and the recognition of business method patents paved the way for changes in patent searches beyond the Patent Search Office. But still, most patent searches are conducted by starting with the electronic databases of the various Patent Offices worldwide.

Patent protection provides security to the patent applicant against patent infringement. Patent infringement would occur if someone made, used or sold your patented door lock without your permission in a country that has granted you a patent, during the term of the patent.

U.S. patents give an inventor exclusive rights on the invention. The exclusive rights will prevent others to make, use, import, sell or offer to sell the invention without the inventor’s permission. In exchange for this grant, the inventors must disclose their invention to the public in the form of a patent application. U.S. patents do not grant inventors the right to make, use, sell, or import their inventions — only to exclude others from doing so.

Search patent is one of the most basic thing an inventor has to do when applying for patent. Search patent enables the inventor to know if his invention is already patented or not. Search patent can determine if the proposed invention merits the patentability as set by the statutory conditions.

The most basic place to do search patent is accessing database of the US Patent and Trademark Office worldwide. There are designated patent libraries which one can use too. During search patent, an inventor should compare a collection of prior patents, printed publications, journals or other technical articles with the invention. These references serve as basis for determining the patentability of an invention. But before doing so, he or she must examine each of these “references” in order to ensure that they are valid.