Penn State University Libraries - Why Preliminary Searching?

Patent searching is a challenging task many searchers choose to do in order to decide on a course of action that will ultimately determine their legal rights. Conducting the searches is challenging precisely because the process involves multiple steps using resources with which many searchers are not familiar. By comparison, patent experts spend many hours in training and many hours searching inventions in their daily work.

For example, patent examiners at the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) spend about twelve hours investigating each patent application to determine whether the invention it describes is patentable. During that time, the examiner consults an average of thirty-eight databases containing patent and non-patent literature to determine whether the invention has ever before been described. Although a novice searcher may miss important patent information when searching, the best defense against these mistakes is practice, patience and the development of one's search skills.

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