Before you register a patent you need to do some basic research.

Not only is it the job of the United States Patent Office to issue patents, it also maintains a database of the patents that have been granted. The majority of patents issued by the Patent and Trademark Office are utility patents. With such a large amount of these patents issued yearly, it is necessary for the inventor to research whether someone else has already patented their newest invention.

Patent searches can be conducted in other ways. The Patent and Trademark Office distributes a weekly list of the patents that were successfully approved during the previous week. This listing is important in competitive patent categories such as pharmaceutical research, to keep abreast of the competition.

For more complicated searches, a visit to the library can be done to review the various patents. Another way in which to research previously issued patents is to use the Patent and Trademark Office’s “Classification and Search Information System (CASSIS)” to search for an old patent. “CASSIS” is available on CD-ROM for anyone who has a slow Internet connection, or anyone who wants to spend more time looking for a specific patent.