Service
Flat-Fee Patent Research for Patentability of US Utility Inventions
Discover the closest competing Prior-Art patents before investing much into your idea.
US Patentability Search (1-3 weeks)
The below flat-fee patent research work is conducted by one of our highly seasoned researcher professionals having at least a Bachelors of Science in Electrical/Computer, Mechanical, or Chemical Engineering, depending on the technical area of the invention. Our search team leader and staff are exclusively former US Patent Office (USPTO) Patent Examiners who were trained by the USPTO in their exclusive patent search and examination methods to efficiently discover prior-art that they use to reject patents. We guarantee that the researcher working on your research case will be a former Patent Examiner having at least 1-3 years experience at the USPTO using their same advanced patent searching systems, and will be one of the best in the Industry. Our "pro" level searches are performed by one of the top Patent Examiners at the USPTO- he has over 7 years Patent Examination experience, and is better than 95% of all searchers/examiners. We believe that this competitive edge is a distinguishing factor that enables our quality of patent research to be unsurpassed.
You may also Select if you want to include a Patentability Assessment, whereby after performing the prior-art search we (e.g., a former Patent Examiner) review the references found in the context of your disclosure, and determine the most relevant references, characterize how they affect patentability, and provide a twofold Patentability Assessment comprising whether a patent examiner would likely hold your invention as patentable over the found references, and a basis to estimate whether the protection garnered by a patent is enough to warrant the significant cost of drafting and filing patent applications. The Basic Patentability Assessment is written only, and covers the closest up to 2 prior art. The Advanced Patentability Assessment includes the Basic level, plus up to 4 prior art and some interactive post delivery Q&A by emails.
We conduct our patent research through our Washington DC office using a wide variety of patent databases including the USPTO's advanced "EAST" system, which is practically the same search system used by USPTO Patent Examiners.
We find that when inventors do there own search, what they find tends to be pretty remote. Even many patent search firms that use expensive commercial search engines get poor results because such online search engines still do not compare to searches done on the advanced EAST system at the USPTO. Moreover, when you combine the USPTO search engine with the capabilities of our expert Patent Examiner searchers, we find you get search results that are very comparable to USPTO primary examiner searches. That is, the vast majority of the time the USPTO does not find any better prior-art than what we already discover first.
Moreover, with Bay Area IP you are also guaranteed that your invention always stays in the safety and competence of the USA. Unfortunately, many in the patent industry employ non-technical/non-legal patent researchers, or worse yet, many outsource your invention and patent research work overseas (e.g., to India, or Asia) without you knowing it, which risks your idea being stolen without any legal recourse by foreigners who are completely outside our legal system.
Our US patent searches will include full text US Patent Publications and granted US Patents going all the way back to the very first set of patents.
The above options cover United States (US) patents and published US patent application. It should be noted that given the US is the largest market in the world it is very common that International patents are also filed in the US (especially for mass market or high tech inventions), whereby the US search generally discovers most, if not all, of the most relevant patent prior-art throughout the world. The "Basic US Search" level is usually adequate to achieve a basic confidence that your same invention has not been already patented in the US. The "Normal US Search" level is much more in-depth that the basic level, and usually adequate to achieve a good confidence that your same or highly similar invention has not been already patented in the US. See the next section for international patent research. The "Normal" level is usually the best balance between cost and thoroughness. The "Advanced" level is our most comprehensive level of flat-fee patent research and seeks to determine with reasonably high confidence if the exact invention exist, or an analogous variation can be construed based on one or more prior-art reference separately or in combination.
To provide you a service commensurate with your financial situation and invention protection goals, we provide various levels of patent searching options, each providing different degrees of depth and breadth of our prior-art patent search. Our most basic patent search, our goal is to determine, with some confidence, if the exact invention has been previously disclosed in a patent. Our most comprehensive level of patent search we search patents and published patent application.
Usually, our patent research is completed in about a week for most jobs. We realize many inventors/companies require fast turnaround times so we make sure to maintain adequate staff to keep it faster (with no extra rush charge) than the industry-standard 2-4 weeks.
Regarding our patent research practice, generally, our search results and our patentability opinions (when ordered) knockout a relatively high percentage of searched inventions, and we make sure that we have a high integrity about not having an "optimistic eye" that leads many other organizations to gloss over problematic prior-art just to get your future business.
US and International Patentability search (1-3 weeks)
The below flat-fee International patent research work performs the US Patent research as described above and expands the search to include a worldwide patent search (of over 50 million patents) for the most relevant prior art that can be used to reject your invention. It covers US Patent Publications, US Patents (going all the way back to the very first set of patents), European Patent Office (and all member countries), Japanese Patent Office (and all member countries), World Intellectual Property Organization (and all member countries), Derwent and the actual patents of lesser developed countries. All are full text with non-English text being provided with an English language abstract.
The "Basic Search" level is usually adequate to achieve a basic confidence that your same invention has not been already patented in the US. The "Normal Search" level is much more in-depth than the basic level, and usually adequate to achieve a good confidence that your same or highly similar invention has not been already patented. The "Normal" level is usually the best balance between cost and thoroughness. The "Advanced Search" level is our most comprehensive level of flat-fee patent research and seeks to determine with reasonably high confidence if the exact invention exist, or analogous variation can be construed based on one or more prior-art reference separately or in combination.
What to expect after you order the patent search
The general process proceeds as follows:
- Upon your payment being honored, we email you confirmation including instructions on how to securely submit your completed invention description form (questionnaire) to us confidentially. While by law, as with all patent law attorneys, we are bound to keep all inventor confidential information secret, as an additional layer of protection, we can provide a signed confidentiality agreement (i.e., nondisclosure agreement, or NDA) covering the invention submission. Note that Registered Patent Attorneys are obligated by law to preserve their clients' proprietary information in strict confidence, otherwise he or she can be permanently barred personally from ever practicing in patents or any other area of law. Moreover, all employees of Bay Area IP have signed nondisclosure agreements.
- Your case will be assigned to a Patent Search professional credentialed according to the level of service procured (but, always highly competent in the mechanical, industrial, electrical, software, and computer arts), who will email you asking any additional information or clarifications if required.
- Within 1-2 days, an estimated completion date will be communicated to you (4-7 days rush available).
- A patent search report will be generated and delivered to you by secure email. The patent search report contains the Patent Search results, soft copies of the closest references found, and is suitable to be presented to a Registered Patent Practitioner for a patentability opinion. Your patent search report is yours to do with as you see fit.
- If we also received an order for a patentability opinion, then a Registered Patent Practitioner will render a patentability opinion and provide their patentability analysis and advice to you (usually in a few days the patent search results are available).
- After we deliver your patent search report and/or any ordered patentability opinion, we will not proceed to perform any further work until we receive instructions and payment for additional services you wish to procure based on the results.
- The patents identified in the patent search report can be submitted in an information disclosure statement with your utility patent application as required by law.
How to Engage our Services
1) Configure the above shopping cart options (if any) according to what best fits your situation, goals, and/or budget. (you may always edit your cart to make any changes- see below for details)
a) The service item may have a text entry field named "Please provide any Special Instructions...", where you should enter any specific guidance or information that may be helpful for us to properly process your order (e.g., any case number we've assigned, deadline situations, how this order relates to any other orders, etc.)
b) The service item configuration total price will be reflected in the "Selected Combination Total" line item below any options menus. Likewise, the "Service ID" will be updated to encode your configuration selections.
2) Click the "select service" button to put the service item you configured into your shopping cart. You will notice shopping cart at the top right of the page, which indicates how many items it currently contains. Click that shopping cart icon anytime you want to see what items are in your shopping cart, and you'll notice a pencil icon on each item which enables you to go back and edit the item, and save your edits by again clicking the "select service" button.
3) Click the "Checkout" button to begin the checkout process. On the Checkout page, enter your email address, client status, and PoC information for the legal service you are ordering. Then click the “next intake page” button to proceed to the payment indication page.
4) Make your payment off-line (i.e., not through our website) using one of the methods specified in the postscript of quoting email. Currently, online payment methods through our website are not implemented yet.
5) After you made your payment off-line, return to the above payment page on our website where you will specify how much you paid, by what means, and some kind of transaction receipt/info for us to research and match it up to your order to approve it.
a) NOTE: Most of our services require 100% prepayment of the quoted fee; however, if our emailed written quote indicates a lesser prepayment amount then instead of our standard full prepayment policy for reduced fixed-fee work, you can take advantage of a reduced minimum down payment fee (e.g., 50% of the quoted fixed-fee, plus any rush fee quoted) to start patent work on each case. The remaining fees are later due at least upon our completing the 1st draft of the ordered legal service for your review/revision and/or our filing.
b) If you paid using methods like PayPal/Zelle/check/money order/bank wire/bank deposit/ etc., then during the above linked checkout process select the "off-line" payment option, which will ask you for which "off-line" payment means you use and a copy of the transaction information so that we may manually confirm and process it to credit it to your account.
6) After you register your payment per the above, our system will guide you to our online new case intake forms to gather your administrative information for this new patent case (e.g., POC, contacts, inventors, assignees, work request details, service agreement, etc.).
7) You will be emailed a link to proceed to our secure client portal dashboard to securely submit your materials, documents and instructions for our legal work.
8) Our team reviews all your submissions and works with you to validate/improve anything needed for us to properly do our legal work.
Of course, if you have any questions not yet answered, or otherwise require any help, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will happily assist you.
Pricing
| Price | 0.00 |
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| Minimum pre-payment | 100 |