Patent Research

Patent research is the best way to gather information about patent. Patent research is particularly necessary in order to verify the patentability of the invention. In conducting patent research on patentability of an invention, the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office cautions that a complete patentability search must consider all prior art, including earlier patents, foreign patents and non-patent literature. Both of the PTO’s patent databases begin with patents granted since 1976, and the Delphion and Academic Universe sites since 1971.

To start the patent research one must access the following major patent sites:

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Patent Database
The USPTO database is one good place to start the patent research. This offers full text and bibliographic searching of US patents from Jan. 1976 to the present. Also full text of patents as needed by patent research including images, is available free of charge. The Bibliographic database consists of the front pages of U.S. patents. The front page of a patent includes data such as the inventor’s name, the patent’s title, and the assignee’s name, as well as the abstract and a brief description of the patent’s contents. The Manual of Classification is available from this site for patent research.

Delphion Intellectual Property Online
This is also another good place to start patent research. It provides U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) patent descriptions as well as full text patents from 1974 to present. This collection also includes extended bibliographic text and some images since 1971.

Academic Universe Subscription access only; check with your Library
Under the Category Legal Research are links to full text patents, without illustrations, from 1971 to the present. Patent research can be done by keyword or by patent or U. S. classification number. Patent research can also be done on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Manual of Classification.

Another place to conduct patent research is through foreign patents.

Canadian Intellectual Property Office Patent Database
This site offers patent research on over 75 years of patents. The CIPO Canadian Patent Database contains bibliographic data, textual data (titles, abstracts and claims) and image data. For patents granted prior to August 15, 1978, the Database contains bibliographic data, the text of titles only and image data.

European Patent Office (Esp@Cenet)
Provided by the European Patent Office, esp@cenet allows patent research on European, WIPO, Japanese, and worldwide patents in general. Full text of patents is available for free patent research online for the last two years. Esp@cenet can also be used to find English-language abstracts of documents in the European Patent Office’s in-house databases of patents from throughout the world . A large proportion of the data goes back to 1970.

Delphion Intellectual Property Online
The Delphion collections offer people conducting patent research information on European patent applications published by the European Patent Office. The collection has bibliographic text and full document images of applications for European patents issued from 1979 to present.

Recommended Reading

1. US Patent Information
An inventor can start his or her own Patent Search by accessing the US patent information database at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html. The...
2. Patent Database
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3. U.S. Patent
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4. Patent Trademark Office
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5. European Patent Office
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