Interesting questions -
I started in Chicago, so we would fly out at 6am, do searches all day,
and fly back that night. Can't do that from Oklahoma.
We also hire a searcher in Washington DC to do our searches -- for
mechanical inventions where the applicant can use any number of terms,
searching electronically by keyword is almost useless. Chemical, bio
and electrical - we can do most of that over the Internet and do keyword
searching.
My practice differs from Steve somewhat - most of my inventors are the
experts in their fields (bio and chem) and they are usually the best
folks to be doing searching and review. As a consequence, I don't do
much searching prior to filing anymore -- they would know if there was
anything out there and we err on the side of filing an application and
seeing what will come out of it. I try not to foreclose the option of
protection on the front end of things.
The PTO has available on-site in Virginia an electronic database of
images where you can "flip" through the mechanical drawings of patents
one page at a time. If they ever make this available online -- it will
be a breeze to search classes of mechanical patents and look for prior
art. Until that time, there really isn't a better way to do a thorough
search online.
A couple of my clients have done the electronic route - they got crap
back. I have received some interesting emails from search firms in
India and the Canary Islands - offering to do electronic searching for
prior art. I haven't used them yet -- but I am thinking about giving
them a whirl just to see what they come up with.
-- Douglas
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