I just ran across this, I haven`t seen anyone mention it before.
Bookmark these links for your next patent search.
It seems to move much faster than the official US site.
http://www.google.com/patents
Google patent help
on my inverter.
What if you'd like to search records in public domain, there are a number of sites where you can check out marriage records, criminal records, birth records etc. If you are wanting to find information for a person in Alabama then you can do a Alabama records search