Patents

Patent Databases

Google Patent Search
Patents submitted to the United Stats (USPTO, 1790+) and European patent offices (EPO, to 1978) in PDF format to include a Prior Art Finder to find patent applications and grants.

Canadian Patent Database
Patents submitted to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) since 1869 searchable by bibliographic record and abstract when available and International Patent Classification (IPC) system.

Canadian Trade-marks Database
This database is comprised of all active and many inactive trade-marks that were either applied for, or registered pursuant to the current Trade-marks Act or former trade-mark legislation.

Espacenet (EPO)
The European Patent Office (EPO)provides free access to international patents since 1836 including Canadian, European, American, Asian and country-based patents.  Search by smart, advanced or classification search engines including the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) or International Patent Classification (IPC) systems.  The patent translator covers translations between English and fourteen other languages, namely Chinese, Danish, Dutch, German, Finnish, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.  More languages will be added in the coming years.

Intellectual Property Digital Library
Provides access to intellectual property data collections hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Databases
The Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

Free Patents Online
Provides fast, free patent searching, with powerful features such as PDF downloading, search management functions, collaborative document folders, and more.

Patents and Technology Transfer Databases
Links to American and international full text patent databases, subject or specialty patent databases and technology transfer databases.

Cambia Patents Lens
Full text patents in the life sciences.

SciFinder  (CAS)
CAS patent coverage from varying publication years covers international patent offices worldwide in chemistry and related disciplines based on IPC and USPTO codes.  Access to the SciFinder database requires a username and password that is different from your Brock portal account information.  Users must first register for an account.

Patent Searching Tools

Patent Searching Tutorial (University of Texas Libraries)
This tutorial addresses topics such as definitions and types of patents, what is patentable, patent myths, and patent application searching.

International Patent Classifications
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

U.S. Patent Class Definitions
United States Patent and Trademark Office.

U.S. Patent Classification Index
Index to the US Manual of Classifications for patents.