Describe your idea in a few sentences. Get a first reading against the four tests a patent examiner applies, plus the kinds of protection that likely fit. Free, no account needed.
No tool can say for certain whether an idea is patentable; only an examiner reviewing a filed application can. This free checker gives a first reading of your description against the four patent tests (patent-eligible subject matter, novelty, non-obviousness and usefulness) and names the open questions. It is not a legal opinion and runs no prior-art search.
Your idea stays private. It is never shared, never used to train AI, and never seen by anyone unless you request a practitioner connection.
“A toddler bowl that grips the table with a suction base and releases with one pull on a side tab, so a parent can lift it off one-handed.”
There's something here. Two of the tests need a closer look before you know how much of it could be protected.
A physical product you can hold. Bowls, tools and devices sit squarely in what patents cover.
Suction bowls are common. Whether a one-pull release tab has been done before is what a search would need to answer.
Release levers on suction cups already exist in phone mounts and bath mats. The question is whether your tab works in a way those don’t.
It solves a real, everyday problem. Usefulness is rarely the sticking point.
In the US, you have one year from the first time you showed, sold or posted it to file. Most other countries need it unpublished on the day you file, so protection there may already be out of reach.
Suction-base feeding bowls and plates for babies, and suction cups with quick-release levers, like phone mounts and bath mats.
A broad area of the patent classification, not a search result. No specific patents were checked.
Your description goes straight into a strategy session with three advisors. Nothing to retype, no card needed.
FR-20261017-7Q2KTo get a US utility patent, an invention has to pass four tests. It has to be the kind of thing patents cover: a machine, a process, a product or a composition, not an abstract idea or a law of nature. It has to be new. It must not be obvious to someone skilled in the field. And it has to be useful. An examiner applies all four, and an idea has to pass every one.
Novelty is judged against everything made public before you file: patents, products, articles and videos, anywhere in the world and in any language. Your own posts, sales and pitches count too. The US gives you one year after your own disclosure to file. Most other countries give you none.
An idea can be new and still be refused as obvious. If an examiner can point to two or three existing things that together add up to your idea, and a skilled person would have had a reason to combine them, the idea fails. What helps: a surprising result, a problem others tried and failed to solve, or a way of working the known pieces don’t suggest.
A utility patent protects how something works. If what’s special is how it looks, a design patent is cheaper and quicker. The name you sell under is a trademark. Code, manuals and artwork fall under copyright. A recipe or process you can keep hidden may be worth more as a trade secret. Many products use two or three of these at once.
This checker doesn’t search patents or publications, and it isn’t a legal opinion. It reads only what you wrote, so a detail you left out can change the result. Use it to find your open questions, then answer them. A strategy session helps you work out what’s really new, a prior art search shows what already exists, and a patent attorney should weigh in before you file.
Test the market, search the prior art (what already exists), and find out if it’s worth filing before you hire an attorney.
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