Corporate Information

The world's most competitive businesses are built on protected innovations and brands.

As exclusive rights to ideas and innovations take up a growing share of company value, patent information is fast becoming the cornerstone of all corporate strategies: marketing, R&D, business development, finance, legal, human resources and information technology.
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Our Mission

Help our customers to be accurate and productive when facing the Intellectual Property challenges.
We are committed to provide the most comprehensive and current databases and to continually innovate to make our search, analysis, alert and management services more efficient.
Quality and customer service will always remain our first priorities.

Our Company

Questel has been focusing on its core business, Intellectual Property, for more than 30 years. Our worldwide recognized expertise is the result of privileged relationships with our customers and partners, and a constant integration of their needs in our offering.
Our company is the result of the merging 20 years ago of Questel, a European-based company, and Orbit, a US-based company. Both companies also had a solid basis in Asia and Oceania.
Lately, Questel has acquired DigiPat, Edital, DesignFinder, The Patent People, Specialized Patent Services and Research Disclosure.
Questel also invested in Lingway, a text-mining company that develops specialized solutions based on powerful multilingual semantic tools.

DigiPat service provides patent copies, US and foreign file histories, and special PTO documents on request.
With one of the industry’s largest collections of File Histories, our experienced staff at the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO), and our international alliances, we are able to supply both US and foreign documents quickly to our clients.

DesignFinder is a subscription based system that collects Industrial Design information from around the world and presents this content in a unified platform that allows searching and a variety of other features.

JF Brown & Associates Are The Patent People
Joseph Brown and John Semiklose, owners of JF Brown & Associates, have been active in the patent and trademark field for 40 years combined. Our fundamental principles are anchored by a keen awareness of the interdependency that underlies the success for all involved.
Our seasoned experience and expertise in patent and trademark search services can provide you with the technical research services that you need; with results supplied in a detailed and efficient manner that you can trust.

JF Brown & Associates is a full service Patent and Trademark company with key expertise in intellectual property searches in a variety of areas.

Specialized Patent Services will reinforce the prior-art search offer currently promoted by The PatentPeople. Technology areas such as electrical, chemical, petroleum, mechanical, and biotech, are covered for the following searches: Patentability and Novelty, Collection, Infringement, Validity and State-of-the-Art.
Specialized Patent Services provides searches exclusively run by skilled professionals located next to the USPTO. This know-how and proximity is compulsory to deliver a high-quality service to our customers.

Specialized Patent Services will also strengthen Questel DigiPat document delivery business in providing expanded file history services and inventory (worldwide), Patent copies, Assignment and title searches, Copyright searches, Legalizations and authentications, Certifications (Patent and Trademark).

Lately, SPS activities have been merged with The Patent People's

Using Defensive Publication to control patent costs
Defensive publication is a cost effective way to stop others patenting an invention.  The concept is simple; by publishing details of an invention, you create prior art, proving the invention is no longer novel and stopping others from patenting the idea.
The strategy does not give the same monopoly benefits as a patent but at a fraction of the cost and time it provides ‘Freedom to Operate’ i.e. you know that you can continue using your invention without the risk that someone will later patent the same concept.