Nanamoms

One of the first things to do before you put out money for a patent attorney is to do a research for products that may be similar to yours. You may not see the product out in the market place as readily but it may be in the works somewhere. Best of all you can do the research on your own. We have a R&D center in our area which was free to browse the inventions already "on the books". Your invention would have to be substantially different not to infringe on an existing project. When I worked for a manufacturing company, we had to do this all the time before we marketed a new product. We didn't necessarily have a patent on our projects but we did "register" them...this is using the tiny (R) after the name of the product. This is different from a name trademark (TM) which you would eventually need to do..although some names cannot be trademarked unless they are unique. There is a lot of law that goes in patents, trademarks and registered items. It is very expensive to bring the product to market thru all the hoops to jump thru. But don't be discouraged but do protect yourself by dating any design drawings, taking photos of the invention in progress and as stated, don't let ANYONE see your drawings or prototypes that you can't trust. I believe there is invention information you can research in D.C. also. Another concern is NOT to fall for those firms that say they can get your invention to market.