Patent Searching Guide

Quick Search [3]

With this search, 80 results are returned.  The results appear in reverse chronological order (newest ones first). The Patent Number (which is a serial number, NOT the Patent Classification Number) and Title are displayed for each.  Note that the phrase “bicycle lock” does appear in all of these Titles.

Brainstorming with terminology is important in Word Searches (particularly if you are getting no relevant results). Remember that the USPTO will allow obscure terminology to be used to name an invention as long as the terminology is truthful. Some inventors will use obscure terminology deliberately to hinder Patent Searchers.

Using the bicycle lock example, if we had searched for bicycle lock as an All Fields search, several obscure titles would be returned (Anti-theft bicycle, Retaining device for personal vehicle with handlebars, Bicycle theft protection system). In these cases, the phrase bicycle lock was included somewhere in the Patent but there are many examples of bicycle lock Patents that never use the term bicycle lock anywhere in the text of the Patent. This is the main reason why word searching, alone, is never the most comprehensive Patent Search.