Running a search on already-issued patents is great, but that alone may not be thorough enough. The ideal patent search includes both issued patents and patent applications - that is, patents that have been applied for, but not yet issued. But how can you do this? Surely you cannot just walk into the USPTO offices and peek over the shoulder of inventors who are filling out their patent applications...or can you? Thanks to the Internet, you can now visit the USPTO website and search through patent applications, as well as already-issued ones. Let's learn how.

The first step is visiting Google Patent Search at the following URL: http://www.google.com/patents.

If you read our article on running a patent search, you may already be familiar with this page. However, you'll need to access a special section of it in order to search for patent applications. For that, you'll want to click "Advanced Patent Search", as shown below.

This takes you to an advanced search screen where you can specify that you only want to search applications, not already-granted patents. Once here, simply type in the nature of the patent applications you want to search for (we used "guitar strings" as an example) and check the box marked "Applications."

Of course, you can refine your patent application search even more from this same screen. For example: let's say you want to only search patent applications that were filed between September 2008 and January 2009. This would be achieved by using the drop-down menus next to the "Filing Date" option (shown below.)

If you have a specific patent application number in mind, you can key it into the box labeled "Patent Number." If you know the title of the patent application or the name of the inventor, there are boxes for that information as well. Once you have customized the search page with all of the things you want to search for, simply click "Google Search" at the top of the page.

What will follow is a page of search results listing the patent applications that match what you searched for. However, we realize that the "raw text" look and feel of these results might not be the most intuitive way to look at them. Luckily, you can use the "View As" menu at the top of the page to change to "Thumbnail" view (shown below.)

Thumbnail view allows you to see the drawings for each patent application, as well as get brief snippets of information by hovering your mouse cursor over them. Simply click any patent application you are interested in to learn more. We'll click "string bender for electric guitar" to demonstrate.

Here, you can discover just about anything about the patent application you clicked on, including the application number, when the application was filed, and who filed it. This information could be useful in any number of situations. For example, if you want to license someone's invention, you will know who that someone is. If you want to know how old a patent application is, you will know for certain. And if you simply want to know if the patent is at all similar to the one you wish to file, reading the abstract and the claims will tell you.

If any of the terms we've used in this article were unclear, or you simply want to learn more about running your own patent search, browse the other articles and help resources on PatentHelpNow.com!