If you’re interested in hands-on, step-by-step instructions on applying for a patent, you may want to consult one of these Nolo resources:
Patent It Yourself, by David Pressman
Patent Pending in 24 Hours, by Richard Stim and David Pressman
The Patent Drawing Book, by Jack Lo and David Pressman
The Inventor’s Notebook, by Fred Grissom and David Pressman
License Your Invention, by Richard Stim
Patent Searching Made Easy, by David Hitchcock, and
Nolo’s Patents for Beginners, by David Pressman and Richard Stim.
A detailed description of these resources is provided in the Introduction, Section C. (Order information is at the back of this book.)
If you have access to the World Wide Web, you may find valuable information related to patents in the following sites:
Nolo (www.nolo.com). Nolo offers self-help information about a wide variety of legal topics, including patent law. (See the intellectual property topic in the Legal Encyclopedia, which incidentally includes selected entries from this part of the book.)
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (www.uspto.gov). This is the place to go for recent policy and statutory changes and transcripts of hearings on various patent law issues. You may also use this site to conduct a search of patents issued since 1971.
PatentCafe (www.patentcafe.com). This inventor-friendly site offers patent resources and information.
Software Patent Institute (www.spi.org). This site lets you search for previous software developments that may affect whether a particular software item qualifies for a patent.