Sure Troy, glad I can help.

If I understand your question, you have taken a product that was already patented and modified/improved it in a way that you think you could get a patent on the modification?

If that is correct, you should first note that you could not make, use or sell the invention, with your modification, if it requires the use of the original invention without the express permission of the original patent owner. For example, you found a chair that has 3 legs and decided that 4 would make it more stable. You could get the patent on the 4th leg, but you would still need the 3 legged chair to make your invention, so you would need that inventors permission.

As for doing a patent search, I would check with www.google.com/patents first. If you do not see anything there, you could potentially move forward with the patent. If you would like to hire someone to do a thorough search, our company does it for a small fee as well, check out www.LloydMarketingGroup.com. 9x out of 10 we find prior art that prohibits our clients from moving forward with their original idea. That means we save them thousands of dollars and a lot of time and heartache.

As for saving money on patents, you can write your own. You mentioned that you feel confident you can convey it well. There is software to help you do that and good books that will teach you as well.

A provisional patent may be a strategy for filing and giving you time to come up with the money to switch to non-provisional in 12 months.

I hope that helps!

Happy Inventing,
Lisa