Why Search for Prior Art? – The 48J Bra Patent

Hi, I'm Rich Beem. I'm a patent attorney in Chicago and I'd like to tell you about one of the inventions that I've had a chance to work on over the years. This happens to be an invention that I conducted a search on in the United States Patent and Trademark Office to see what kind of prior art there was to be able to inform the inventor as to the possible patentability of their invention. And I would like to show you an item of prior art. This is a product that is on the market and has been on the market since before this particular client's invention. And I'd like to show you the prior art product. This is the product right here. This happens to be a bra. It is a size 44-FF bra. It is for very large women and this is the largest bra that is sold in the particular store where this piece of prior art came from. So, there's a 44-FF bra. Now, what happens – and this is the nature of inventions – what happens when the biggest and best product that's on the market doesn't fully satisfy the need that exists for people. So the particular challenge that this inventor faced was the woman that the bra was designed for needed a size 48-J bra. And there was an actual prototype – I don't have it with me here to show you on the video – but when I went to the patent office, I took the size 48-J bra with me. Now, how do you search for prior art in the patent office? This is something that you might be interested in. First, it helps to know what class to search in because there are about 7 million patents in the US Patent & Trademark Office, and you can waste a lot of time if you look in the wrong place. So there is what's called a Manual of Classification, and it lists every technology by class. And it turns out that bras are classified broadly under a class called “surgical” and the sub-class is “around the body bandages.” That's a true story, and when you go to the sub-class under “around the body bandages,” there is a sub-class for bras. And there's at least a couple of hundred patents on bras. There's patents on just about every technology that you can imagine. So, the results of the prior art search is that if this is the closest thing – the size 44-FF bra – and it doesn't have much in the way of support, and it doesn't have enough in the way of size, and the inventor has a size 48-J bra, that's something new. That's novel and it's non-obvious, and it's capable of being patented. It's what we call patentable subject matter and it satisfies the statute where the inventor should be entitled to obtain a patent. You may have an invention on a particular technology that you've been working on. There may be a particular need that you have seen, a particular solution that you have developed, a particular problem that you have overcome. If you would like to patent your technology, your invention, that's what we do at Beem Patent Law Firm. Please call me, I'm at 312-201-0011. Thank you.