Everyone has a bright Idea now and then, what to do with it is the question that seems to stop those ideas dead in it's tracks.

I am going to list a couple of links that you can find usefull when you are looking for resources for your new bright idea.

Well the first place you want to go is to the US Patent Office website.
http://www.uspto.gov
You can browse on their site to get more information on patents.

Next go to the Quick Search of the existing patents page.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/search-bool.html
Here fill in the Term 1 field with your keyword, then select the Field that you want to look for that keyword(s) in. In case you can't find it, the Description field is at the very bottom of the list. You can enter another keyword and a field to do a double search. Click Search.

Once the results come back, scan through the titles and see if anything sounds like what you are looking for. If oyu find one, click on the title.

Here you will find a lot of information about this patent. On the top of the page and on the very buttom you will find buttons for images and any other supplemants they have for this patent.

If you do not find anything that matches what your idea, you will need to do a pattent application search, follow this link.
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html

Here you do the same thing, fill in the keyword(s), choose a field and search. Same procedure as above, scroll throught the titles, click on it and read the info.

If you don't find anything that looks like your idea, you have a good chance of having a new unique product/idea.

You did your homework, now you can hire a pattent search atturney to do a complete pattent search for you, and then a product development company.

Without this step of doing a search by yourself first, hiring someone to deal with your idea can be very expencive and fullish without knowing that you did all you could to confirm that your idea is unique. You can ofcourse pay some one to do this for you but know this, ideas come to many people but only a fraction of them are unique and "great", so throwing money at every one of them is not a very good idea.

Do your homework first, then hire professionals. It may take some time to dig through all of the patents but it is worth it.

It's a good feeling to know you got a potential winer.