(4) Search Results

Paid $450 to a patent-related Law Firm I found online to execute a patent search; mainly to corroborate my own online searches with things I may not have found, along with foreign patents and older patents not published online. Success! Nobody in the entire world seems to have come up with my idea, although there were some that were close (but no cigar!). It's an amazing feeling, unless of course there are several patent pending efforts going on there already, that simply haven't been published. We'll see, over the next several years.

The Patent search included about 30 somewhat-relevant results; all of which I'll have to reference to some degree as 'prior art', and then also reference in terms of improvments my own invention makes on them. An improvements there are, in terms of design, utility, usefulness, usage, etc.

I had been making incremental steps at getting a designer to consult with and start down the prototyping road; first step was putting together an NDA. Waiting for the search results had delayed this activity somewhat; now with this professional validation (although not guaranteed!) that my invention is patentable and in fact unique (though not necessarily marketable!), progress will accelerate on the NDA and design/prototyping stages.