Is there a place online that you can search patented products?

I've designed a knife lock that is simulare (but improved upon) to 2 companys locks that they say is patented. I want to see what their specks are and see if there are others that may be closer to mine.

United States Patent and Trademark Office
http://www.uspto.gov/

...but like anything else to do with the Guvment, you'll probably have a hell of a time finding what you want.

Actually, go here: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-bool.html

If you know the inventor, type the name in the "TERM 1" field and select inventor name in the "Field 1" field.

If these patents are related to factory knives, the Assignee is what you will want to search for. Put the company name in Term 1 and select assignee in Field 1.

If you have any idea of when the patents were filed, select the date, otherwise select 1790-present.


The assignee is the company that has the rights to the invention. Chances are that if an employee came up with the design, he will be listed as the inventor but the company will be listed as the assignee. Since you probably don't know the inventor, an assignee search is most likely to get you the results.

Are you planning on filing a patent on the improvements or just making sure you are not infringing?

Thanks guys. Yea I found that the search function on the first page was not the right area, and then through looking around I finally found the area you linked to Bob. I haven't had much time yet to go through everything. I did a quick search for Fiskers since their Gerber?s parent company and got 270 records so it may take a little while to go through it all.

Yes, my number one goal is to make sure that I'm not infringing, and then if I can make a few tests I was going to see if it would be viable enough to actually do my own patent.

Bob, your my inspiration to look into this. I've been through your site a couple of times and I've read a few posts here where you've mentioned patents, and I thought it would be really nice to say, "I own a patent on something I made."

I have three patents, all tools related to the work I did at companies I worked for. They own the tools and all rights, I am the inventor of them all.

Two of the three have been patented in over 100 countries each.

It is kinda cool to know that you thought of something NOBODY else did and it is recorded in history.

I can recommend a couple of books if you need me to.

I have some notebooks full of ideas and some I think would make a lot of money but I have to get the capital together to make it all happen. Then I can make knives full time and not worry about the cash. Sure would be nice.

Holly S*%t, 100 countries, what are they, that's cool!

Yea, I'm in a book buying mode right now, waht are a couple that you could recommend?

Thanks!

"The Inventor's Desktop Companion"
by Richard Levy



"Patent it yourself"
by Pittman


These are both excellent books.


My patents, if you are interested, are the following numbers. You just search by patent number in the USPTO site I linked to above.

5,855,079
6,158,134
6,442,856

These are utility patents which means I patented what the tool does, not how it looks. A design patent is for how it looks.

You may have heard that someone can change the color of your idea and it is now something else and they can make it without infringing on your idea. This is true if you have a design patent that says my tool looks just like this and is RED. If I made the exact same tool but painted it blue, it would be different.

A utility patent is harder to get because you are patenting what the item does. In the case of a knife, you could patent a new lock design or improve on an existing lock design and get a utility patent. To patent a shape of a knife blade, you would get a design patent.

So this will bring up an interesting question of which I go for. I guess I will need to see how Gerber and Benchmade have theirs.

Both of theirs are very simulare so I don't see how they could have gotten a utility. They both lock in the same fashion, and the locking devices act the same, it is the locking devise that is different which is how mine would be.

UUUaaag, I gotta work but I want to get on there and see what they say!!!!