Mar
14
I was doing due diligence on an innovative idea I have (at least I think its innovative) and wanted to check if there are patents issued on anything similar so as to avoid any prior art. there are many patent search engines but I happened to check out freepatentsonline.
Before I could start doing my work, my eyes fell on this ‘List of Crazy Patents‘. Its a refreshing read to say the least. The best one I liked so far is
Hands free towel carrying system
and I quote the recap from the website "A towel with a neck loop. Seriously — that’s all it is. And it took until 2004 to patent such a thing. I wonder what other amazing inventions remain to be discovered???"
Have a great weekend!
March 15th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Speaking of “any prior art” - freepatentsonline provides means for checking patents in English only. Just come think to tons of prior art lurking beneaf the ground of English language - like Russia prior art (e.g. see http://patentsfromru.com/priorartsearch.html ), German, Japanese etc.
March 15th, 2008 at 11:12 am
@Howard,
Thanks. While my article was more towards throwing light on the crazy patents, I do use a lot of patent search tools normally. But your point is very interesting and an essential one i.e., about searching for prior art in other languages and not just English. Thanks once again for the valuable pointer.