You Are Not Doing Thorough Research On Your Idea

A misconception that plagues Inventors is two-fold, one they don't do the proper research to see if their idea is patented and the other is they don't do research to see if it is on the market. These two are independent of each other, but they both need to be done before you move forward and start spending money on your idea. You can do a lot of this for free, it just takes your time.
They forget every item patented is not on the market and every product on the market is not patented. So, just doing a patent search is not the answer to every idea you may want to research. I get contacted by Inventors all the time telling me they did a patent search and could not find their idea anywhere and I have had Inventors swear they looked online and in every store for their idea and can't find it.
In both cases they missed the product in the other field. When checking to see if your idea is out there you need to check both areas not just one. Go into any large chain store and look at how many products you see on the shelf without a patent. I think you will be amazed at what you find.
As I always say "patentable does not equal marketable" In a number of cases branding and getting to market first has proven to be more effective than a patent.

There may be some that the patent time line just ran out. There may be products that are patented without any markings. (Not a smart idea by the way).
A week ago I was in one of the Big Box Home Improvement chains looking around. I ran up on a new interesting tool by a Major well know company in the industry. I looked for any patent or pending markings on the tool or packaging & found nothing. I just figured there must be prior art that kept the product/company from filing an application on it......
All day long this tool was on my mind for some reason,so I decided to do a google product search for similar products. I found nothing else close to it then decided to do a patent/application search.After 7 hrs of solid searching I found nothing else that came close to it. The next day I spent about 4 hrs searching again without any results. I tried all different search words that should of gotten me close to the idea. Hmmm this is going to be a challenge...
For some reason I couldnt get this product off my mind. I couldnt beleive if there wasnt any prior art out there why this Major Tool Company wouldnt file a patent app and mark patent pending on the product.

You will also find companies that put the patent info on the packaging and not on the product.