Patent Overload

I just discovered that now through the magic of Google, one can simply search for patents in an easy, user-friendly way. Although it's not perfect- Michael Agger of Slate writes here "that Google's search engine misses results. Serious inventors will want to use more established methods (or even one of those patent lawyers) to see where their idea stands." Still, the very fact that it's easier to poke around with makes it both a fun conversation piece as well as a highly useful device to at least get started. Still, I remember the old days...

Not to sound too much like one of those old-timers who used to have to walk to school 5 miles uphill both ways with no shoes in the driving snow, but I spent a good part of a summer helping my father work on some patents for a shelving system/clamping bookend system he had (we hoped) invented. Before he got really into it, and got a lawyer involved, et cetera, we looked them up by hand. In those olden days (maybe 11 years ago?) I had to go down to the US Patent Office in Northern Virginia and pore over dusty yellowed pieces of paper. There is a filing system to get you to those patents of some relevance, but it's not perfect so most of my time was spent going through a whole box full of stuff in order to find two or three that seemed slightly relevant. Sometimes I would copy those for further consideration, to see if they needed to be cited in my father's application, or if they had ideas which came close enough that it needed to be made clear how his differentiated. Anyway, despite being a neat experience in both intellectual property rights and government buildings, it was also kind of a pain. Enter the internet and search engines, and exit all the monotony. For as in depth as we were going at that point, Google would have been a perfect tool for us. I guess the young whippersnappers will get to use it, and ignore those like me who can shake their fingers and lecture them about the old days. Ah, progress.

P.S. If you're curious, just try searching for "clamping bookend" and note the first 6 patents that come up. Or, for the truly lazy, just click here. Seriously, that's my Dad right there-how cool is that? And if you want to pay us millions of dollars to manufacture this fabulous idea, just let me know! As Dr. Peter Venkman once said, "No job is too big, no fee is too big!"