I am developing a piece of software which I believe is really cool and very useful. I am currently primarily targeting Android, but I would like to target iOS, Windows Phone, and Windows RT in the future as well.
The problem: there is another company that has developed a program very similar to what I am developing, and their program has been around for about 25 years now.
The catch: this company's program does not exist on mobile devices, and so, in a sense, I would like to provide some competition in the mobile device sector of the market.
The question: Is there an easy way to do a patent search that will return a comprehensive, readable list of patents? I know the US Patent Office's website has a patent search tool, but it is quite archaic. Even Google's doesn't really do what I'd like it to do. (Google Patents seems much more primitive than Google Scholar).
I am still several months away from releasing the app that I am building, but my progress is coming along substantially, and I would like to know what patents I could run into before continuing my development. Although I don't agree with software patents by principle, I would like to respect the patents that exist to try and avoid any legal troubles if I release this app and this company tries to take any action against me.