Research Guides: Patent Resources on the Web and in the Engineering Library: Patent Databases

Subject Guide

Email Me

Contact:

WALC 3053
Library of Engineering & Science

765-496-7279

Subjects: Engineering, Technology, & Computer Science, Physical Sciences

Copyright
Copyrights protect literary, artistic, and musical materials. They are administered by the Library of Congress and last for the life of the author plus seventy additional years.
Patents
Patents protect inventions. They are administered by the United States Patent & Trademark Office and last up to twenty years from date of filing.
Trademark
Trademark protects identifiers (logos, names, slogans, etc.) that are used to identify the source of a commercial good or service. They are administered by the USPTO and they last as long as they remain in active use.
Trade Secrets
Trade Secrets protect secret information, often information that isn't patentable or is too sensitive to patent. They only last as long as they're secret, and are protected by legal documents like non-disclosure agreements.

Patent Public Search
The new (as of 2022) patent search tool from the USPTO. It covers US granted patents and patent applications from 1836 to present, although older patents have fewer searchable pieces of information. This replaces the PatFT, AppFT, PubEAST, and PubWEST search tools.
7 Step Search Strategy - (USPTO - PTRC)
This is a brief one-page guide to patentability searching. It is focused on USPTO databases.

Patent Lens
This free and open database of international patents has a modern search interface and offers some unique patent searching tools, notably gene sequence searching.
Google Patents
This database features Google's easy-to-use search interface, but Google's search algorithm can be inconsistent when dealing with legal-technical patent language. You can use it for doing a first pass when patentability searching, but make sure to use other resources as well.

Derwent Innovations Index
This database covers international patents and rewrites the titles in easier-to-read language. Most topics go back to the 1960s. Chemical structure searching is available. This is a subscription database for Purdue users, and not open to the general public. Derwent is recommended for researchers and students, but is not the best choice for a formal patentability search.
NexisUni This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
NexisUni features more than 15,000 news, business and legal sources from LexisNexis—including U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1790—with an interface that offers discovery across all content types, personalization features such as alerts and saved searches, and a collaborative workspace with shared folders and annotated documents. NexisUni's patents content can be found using the "Menu" dropdown at the top of the homepage. Their patent coverage focuses on US, EU, Great Britain, Japan, and WIPO documents.

Espacenet
This European Patent Office (EPO) database has international coverage and includes an excellent Cooperative Patent Classifcation (CPC) search tool. Patent information is provided by more than 82 patent-granting organizations. Machine translations are available for many languages. Espacenet also does an excellent job of making connections between patent filings in different countries, identifying "patent families" that share claims.
PatentScope
This World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) database searches international Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications.
Canadian Patents Database
This is the Canadian Intellectual Patent Office database for Canadian patents.
Japanese Industrial Property Digital Library
This is the Japanese Patent Office (JPO)'s search tool. It contains machine translations from Japanese to English (use the DETAIL option).
Directory of Intellectual Property Offices - World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO)
Lists countries and website links. Some sites have an English version.
Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS)
KIPRIS is South Korea's patent search tool, and is available in English.

Patent Application Information System (PAIR)
PAIR is a tool for finding public, but not easily accessible, information about patents and patent applications. You can see all of the legal filings, supporting documents, and correspondence between an inventor and a patent examiner for a given document.
Patent Assignments Database
Who owns the rights to a given patent? If the individual or organization to whom the rights to the patent have been assigned is change after it's published, that data is recorded here.
Publication Site for Issued and Published Sequences (PSIPS)
This database contains gene sequence data associated with specific patents. Search by document number and date.