[quote=jpinpb]
About the only thing I know is you have to get a patent attorney to research whether there’s a patent already existing on the idea for the product or something similar.[/quote]
You can do your own research at USPTO website or Google Patents page, but without an attorney you are more likely to misinterpret something. If you are dealing with business method patent an attorney will help a lot if you want to draft a defensible patent.
UCSD extension program has a few intellectual property related classes, including ‘patent drafting’, ‘patent searching’ and ‘principles of patents’.
