What is a patentability search and patentability opinion? What does it cost?
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A patentability search involves searching the public world wide records for published patents and patent applications at the US and foreign patent offices, searching the internet, and in some cases literature articles for any public disclosure(s) relating to the invention to see if the client's particular invention is novel, non-obvious, and useful within the statutory meaning of those terms. A review of any relevant disclosures that are found is completed and an opinion of an attorney is given to you as to the likelihood of obtaining meaningful patent coverage and of what scope is obtainable for the invention in view of what was found. In most cases the search and an oral patentability opinion runs about $1,200. It can be less where something negative is found quickly and is usually more where a literature search of databases is necessary (although it is usually unnecessary to search literature for inventions that don't normally appear in literature articles).
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