Further advice

For general advice and information on patents and other Intellectual Property (IP) contact our Central Enquiry Unit.

Inventor advice

There are various advice and support organisations throughout theUnited Kingdom (UK) for inventors.

Business advice

There are regional business advice and support organisations throughout the UK.

Our expert search services

You can ask us to do a patent search for you for a charge. This option may be useful if you need comprehensive search results to help you take a decision.

A patent search can:

• give an early indication of the chances of obtaining patent protection
• find out if your competitor's patent is valid
• help identify any infringement problems
• bring to your attention the state of the art for any particular technical area

These searches are not part of the patent application process. So you are free to define what you want searched or simply the question you want answered. However, these are the most commonly requested search types that we receive:

Patentability search

A patentability search identifies any patents or other publications relevant to the novelty and inventiveness of your product or process.

Freedom to operate patent search

A freedom to operate search finds out if your idea will infringe another patent that is in force.

Patent validity search

A comprehensive search to help you check whether a granted patent (whether it belongs to you or not) is valid with respect to it being new or obvious in the light of prior art.

Grant assessment searches

A grant assessment search makes it easier for an awarding organisation, such as a regional development agency, public-funding organisation or university to decide whether to award grants to fund a project to develop new ideas.