Some inventors consider doing the search of the Patent Office on their own, but there are several downsides to this plan. Their emotional attachment to the invention will cloud their judgment, and they will steer away from finding other products that are similar. Although chances are they have already identified a few other competitors, searching the U.S. Patent Office is a more intense process. From my experience with clients who have done their own search, they have ignored similar products that have already been patented because they don’t want to know that their idea isn’t as unique as they once thought it was.He goes on to point out that Thomas Edison did not actually invent the lightbulb.
However, finding additional similar products does not mean that all is lost. The strategy changes to comparing the proposed invention with the patented one, and discussing ways to improve it and make it patentable. A good patent agent or attorney will provide objective insight at this phase. The process is to take the invention, ignore the parts that have already been incorporated into another patent or patents, and the remainder is a patentable invention.
There's a certain strategy to figure out what specific part of an invention is patentable (and of value to anyone), and without some experience or guidance in mapping out exactly how the patent landscape looks, you might overlook the best direction which to apply your effort.
