Purpose: The purpose of this tutorial is to describe basic and advanced concepts and techniques useful for patent searching at MSOE. This tutorial is intended to provide an introductory overview of patent searching, with an emphasis on helpful search techniques that can be employed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website. This tutorial is not comprehensive, and it does not offer legal advice. A significant secondary purpose of this tutorial is to highlight the importance of patents as technical literature resources that can provide unique information.
This tutorial requires 50 minutes to complete.