Patent Research
Patents are legal documents. They need to be checked to determine the extent of workable ideas and protected ideas during any professional design project.
Patent-searching is available through the web and keyword searching is a feature. However, because there is a great backlog of issued patents, there is a link to also search published applications on the USPTO search page.
However, for future reference, keep in mind that a comprehensive, thorough patent search still requires expert searchers who are familiar with the patent classification system. Such experts are usually intellectual property lawyers and patent librarians.
Patents are unique technical literature that may also be helpful in building a bibliography of relevant articles. Patents can also be used to carry out competitive intelligence on companies and their products.
Patents constitute an extremely important body of technical information. They offer unique information. They can also help you to identify trends, experts, and companies who are doing work in specific areas. A United States patent features useful information such as the title, full name(s) of inventor(s), place(s) of residence, assignee, date filed, references cited (including other patents that have cited the patent), abstract and a drawing.
Search Tips
- To search patents, go to the United States Patent Office website (www.uspto.gov), click on Patents, and choose Search Patents, or click here.
- To view the actual patent, click on the Images link towards the top of the page. The images are saved as .tiff files, and you may need to download a .tiff reader to view them.
- Because of the delay in conferring patents, you should also search the patent applications.
- Use the Advanced Patent Searching Techniques and the Beyond Advanced Patent Searching techniques in the MSOE Library's Patent Tutorial to specifically target medical device and medical device company information in patents.
- You can find information about who referenced certain patents by using the REF field code in a search. For example, the query REF/4,615,002 retrieves all of the patents that cite Patent Number 4,615,002. This information can also be found within each patent by clicking on [Referenced By] in the Reference Cited section.
- For more information about patent searching, the following tutorial is available at the University of Texas at Austin: the Richard McKinney Engineering Library Patent Searching: A Guide to Online Resources and Information
Other Patent Resources
- Google Patents: www.google.com/patents. Google Patent's indexing method is not yet perfected so we don't recommend that you use this as your sole patent searching resource.
- European Patent Office: www.epo.org
- UK Intellectual Property Office: www.ipo.gov.uk
- Japan Patent Office: www.jpo.go.jp
- Canadian Intellectual Property Office: www.patents1.ic.gc.ca
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