Library Guides: Patent Searching for Scientists: A Guide: Patent Resources

Patents & Trademarks

Searchable databases of some of the world's major patent and trademark offices. Tulane Libraries do not collect print copies of patents, but the full-text of many patents are freely available electronically.

United States Patent Full-text & Image Database
Provides free access to U.S. patents full-text since 1976 and full-page images since 1790.

The display of each patent's full-text includes a link to obtain full-page images of each page of the patent. Information from Certificates of Correction and Reexaminations is not included in the full-text database per se, but can be found as pages attached to the full-page images of the original patent. Patents from 1790 to December 1975 offer only the patent number and the current US patent classification in the text display, and can be searched only by those fields. However, this limited text display also includes a hyperlink to obtain full-page images of each page of the patent.

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
esp@cenet - European Patent Office
The Estonian esp@cenet database contains patent applications, granted patents and utility models dating from 1994, when the Patents Act of the Republic of Estonia entered into force and the granting of patents started again following the end of the Soviet period.
Patent Abstracts of Japan
Canadian Intellectual Property Office
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), a Special Operating Agency (SOA) associated with Industry Canada, is responsible for the administration and processing of the greater part of intellectual property in Canada. CIPO's areas of activity include:
•Patents cover new inventions (process, machine, manufacture, composition of matter), or any new and useful improvement of an existing invention;
•Trade-marks are words, symbols or designs (or a combination of these), used t
Google Patent Search
Indexes U.S. patents from 1790s to recent months. Includes full-text when freely available.
The Patent and Trademark Resource Center Association
Association maintains this list of links to searchable patent databases from a number of countries.

Overview & Background

Understanding Patents - General Information Concerning Patents
General Information Concerning Patents
What Are Patents, Trademarks, Service Marks, and Copyrights?
Patents (Overview)
West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Ed. Shirelle Phelps and Jeffrey Lehman. Vol. 7. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2005. p388-397.
Patent and Trademark Office
West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Ed. Shirelle Phelps and Jeffrey Lehman. Vol. 7. 2nd ed. Detroit: Gale, 2005.. p387-388

Finding Patents

Examiner Handbook to the U.S. Patent Classification System
Patent Searching: Tutorial and Guide to Online Resources and Information
Guide to Patent Searching - University of Texas. Patent Tutorials (Which one is right for you?)

Databases with patent information

Compendex (Ei Village 2)
EP Patents comprises millions of patents from the US Patent and Trademark Office and European Patent Office. This database can be cross-searched with other databases on Compendex/Engineering Village, retrieving results both from patents and scientific literature.
Nexis Uni
All U.S. patents full-text back to 1971 and other full-text patent databases and sources. Search by content type -> legal -> patent search
SciFinder
Use the SciFinder Scholar search features, including the option to search by chemical structure or formula, to search for chemistry-related patents. Software provides links to full-text when available free. Web version requires registration with a tulane.edu email account. NOTE: Our license for SciFinder Scholar limits the number of simultaneous users. If you have difficulty accessing the database, try again at an off-peak time such as early in the morning or during the evening.

SciFinder covers biomedicine, chemistry, engineering, material science, and more. Includes Chemical Abstracts (1907-present) and Medline (1950-present). Search for journal citations technical reports, dissertations, chemical substances, reactions, and more.

Searching for Patents in Engineering Village

Cross-search on Engineering Village, retrieving results both from patents and scientific literature. Refine your results by using Patent as a document type.

Compendex (Ei Village 2)
An interdisciplinary engineering database with over 9 million records referencing 5,000 engineering journals and conference materials dating from 1884. Also known as Engineering Village.