Prior Art Search

Any product, process or concept that has been previously sold in the marketplace or previously disclosed in trade journals, etc. will invalidate a patent's claim.

Make certain your invention does not already exist anywhere in the world, or has not been anticipated by experts in the field. Sometimes you can search the internet to see if a similar product already exists. Here are a few web sites you can search. You should also search for trade journals in the field of your invention on Google.

Prior Art Search Site	Content
google.com	The most thorough search engine
Hoover's Online Business Network	Probably the top business news related web site on the internet
MSN Search	Second to Google.
Yahoo	More of a directory than search engine
Ask Jeeves	Third to Google.