Patent Gnome: Patent search in minutes for $30. Attorneys charge $1,500+.

Patent attorneys charge $1,500–$4,000 and take months. Patent Gnome takes minutes and costs $30. Enter your idea in plain language, get real patent numbers, direct conflicts, and if you're blocked, 5 alternative directions to explore. Not a legal opinion. The research that informs one.

Hey Product Hunt 👋 I'm Viacheslav, a software developer and builder who got frustrated watching inventors and founders waste months and thousands of dollars on patent research before validating their ideas. Patent attorneys are great — but $1,500–$4,000 and months of waiting is overkill for a first sanity check. You just need to know: is this space clear, or am I walking into a wall? So I built Patent Gnome. Enter your idea in plain language. In minutes it searches EPO, OpenAlex academic database, and the global web index — analyzes 150+ patents — and tells you: Clear: here's the landscape, no direct threats found Blocked: here are the exact patents you'd collide with, with links If you're blocked, there's an experimental "escape routes" feature that generates 5 alternative idea directions that might avoid the conflicts. $30 per search. No subscription. No lawyers needed for this step. Happy to answer any questions about how it works technically — AMA.

Common question: is this a replacement for a patent attorney? No. This is the research step that happens before you hire one — or that helps you decide whether hiring one is even worth it. Think of it as the $30 check before the $3,000 commitment.

To show what the output looks like, here's a real search we ran on a wearable glucose monitor idea: patent-gnome.com/#/examples/glucose-monitor . It found 4 direct collisions with real patent numbers. This is exactly what you get.

If you're a hardware builder, biotech researcher, or working on any physical product idea — this is built for you. Would love your feedback on the results quality.