It’s the one you don’t ask of course. Professionals in our industry are increasingly finding intellectual property issues in the problems their clients bring to them to solve.

Traditional forms of intellectual property include patents, trademarks, copyrights and design marks, image creation and the like. The wide acceptance of the Internet has introduced a fox into the intellectual property henhouse and is driving much of what is happening in intellectual property legislation. Intellectual property issues such as domain name ownership rights, copyrighted materials used as Website content, and patenting business methods make front-page headlines.

The ability of the Internet to reach such a large group of people has radically changed the landscape of intellectual property information. Much of the information about intellectual properties such as patents and trademarks had been proprietary, controlled by a few specialty information providers.

Most countries make their databases available free of charge through the Internet. Commercial sites like Delphion offer value-added services for a fee. Many options for intellectual property research now exist, including information services such as LexisNexis with its comprehensive patent database, trademark information, and intellectual property regulations.

In our opinion, intellectual property information that is available on the Internet should not be a replacement for legal search by a professional trademark or patent lawyer but it certainly is a good place to start. We (Henderson Robb) use the Internet ourselves on a regular when doing brand name, product/service name and web site development including basic level domain searches and the online design-driven contests that we create for our clients.

The following are some of the sites we recommend you try first and foremost:

1. Delphion.com – Free and fee-based site
2. The Intellectual Property Mall (ipmall.fplc.edu) – Free site
3. The Intellectual Property Transaction Database (fvginternational.com) – Fee-based site
4. Law.com Intellectual Law Practice Center (law.com/professionals/iplaw.html) – Free and fee-based site
5. MicroPatent (micropat.com) – Fee-based site
6. Patent Café Intellectual Property Network (patentcafe.com) – Free and fee-based site
7. Thomson & Thomson (thomson-thomson.com) – Free and fee-based site
8. World Intellectual Property Organization (wipo.org) – Free site