Research Guides
        
PATENT SEARCHING GUIDELINES
       
    
  Library Contact
 
     

Carol Salomon, Engineering Librarian
tel: 212-353-4187
email: salomo@cooper.edu
 
    
  PUBLIC ACCESS (FREE) PATENT WEBSITES:
    
     

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: http://www.uspto.gov

General Information about Patents: http://www.uspto.gov/go/pac/doc/general/
  
Finding Patents: Search by keyword, class, number, inventor name, licensee name, etc., for patents granted since 1976; retrieve the full text of patents and page images since 1976. Patents from 1790 to 1975 are searchable by class and by patent number only; results will be a TIFF image of the whole patent. You will need a TIFF image viewer on your computer. (The USPTO website points you to suggested free viewer download sites).

Unfortunately, USPTO TIFF images must be printed or downloaded one page at a time.

Once you have identified the patent number, downloading a patent is a lot easier at http://free.patentfetcher.com which retrieves U.S. and foreign patents in PDF.

Google Patents
http://www.google.com/patents
Okay for quick-and-dirty searching, but not (yet) a tool for serious patent searchers.
Better for recent patents; quality control is poor for older patents. Searches are sometimes inexplicably incomplete. For serious patent searching, use the USPTO site, above.
   
The European Patent Office:     (esp@cenet):
http://ep.espacenet.com/    or     http://gb.espacenet.com
Search for patent documents in their original languages from the European Patent Office (EPO) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (PCT). Site lists patent families (related patents filed in more than one country). Countries can also be searched individually. English-language abstracts included for all patents.
  
Canadian Patents Database: http://patents1.ic.gc.ca/intro-e.html
Search for patent applications and issued patents for the past 75 years.

German Patents: http://www.depatisnet.de
English-language interface available. Retrieve patent families, including related Japanese patents.
 
    
  PATENT SEARCHING TUTORIAL: developed by the McKinney Engineering Library,
U. of Texas at Austin: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/engin/patent-tutorial/index.htm

    
        
  PATENT DATABASE SEARCHING TIPS:
    
 

Free-text searches are not reliable for patent subjects. There is no requirement that patent titles and descriptions be in straightforward English: your description of a machine or design may be very different from other inventors' descriptions of similar items. A word search will probably retrieve something on your topic, and you can look at those patents to see what the likely patent Class would be for that invention.

To do a comprehensive search, you need to find the Class and Subclass into which your invention would fall. One way to do this is to use the Index to the U.S. Patent Classification (http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspcindex/indextouspc.htm)
and the Manual of Patent Classification.
(http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/)

These and other tools are listed on the USPTO website under the Tools and Manuals section of the Patents Guidance, Tools and Manuals page
(http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/guides.htm)

Once you have likely classes for your invention, you can use the patent database to search for other patents in that class. Compare drawings, but note especially the Claims made in patents for items similar to yours. The Claims define what is new and what is protected by the patent.
   
  Searching all patents in a class/subclass on the USPTO website:
 

In the Advanced search screen, enter your search in the format: CCL/class number
For example, if the class/subclass is 211/13.1, type: CCL/211/13.1

Or, in the Basic search screen, select "Current Classification Code" from the pull-down menu and type the class/subclass number: 211/13.1

To search for everything in a patent class, use right truncation like this: CCL/211/$
    
    
  ADDITIONAL PATENT SEARCHING & MONITORING TOOLS
    
  Official Gazette:  Patents  (eOG:P)   http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/
 
Every Tuesday, the Official Gazette lists patents issued during the previous week arranged by number and class/subclass. It provides an abstract and one illustration for each patent and links to the full text of each patent in the USPTO database.
The Official Gazette website maintains the past 52 weeks of patent publications.
The Official Gazette: Patents and its sister publication The Official Gazette: Trademarks, are especially useful for quick review of new patents and trademarks within specific classes to detect possible infringement on a patent or trademark that you own.
    
  CASSIS (Classification and Search Support Information System)
  Issued on DVD, CASSIS is a set of separately-titled resources which allow users to search for current assignees, find the current classification of any U.S. patent, search the full text, and view page images of all U.S. patents and trademarks. Available at all Patent Depository Libraries, including the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry & Business Library (see next).
    
    
  Patent Depository Libraries
    
  Each state in the U.S. has at least one major library designated as a Patent Depository Library. Closest to Cooper Union is the New York Public Library's Science Industry & Business Library (SIBL) at Madison Avenue and 34th Street; entrance at 188 Madison Avenue.

In addition to a variety of searching tools, indexes, and legal resources, SIBL has a complete set of all U.S. patents and a large collection of international patents and related materials.
  
NYPL/SIBL website: http://www.nypl.org/research/sibl/index.html
(select Patents & Trademarks under Research Guides)

   
    
  Commercial Patent Databases:
   
  Libraries in industry, as well as patent attorneys, use online databases of U.S. and international patents that provide more search flexibility than the free sources listed here. These databases are very expensive, and searching is usually done by professionals.
   
    
  PATENTING RESTRICTIONS
   
  A U.S. patent cannot be obtained if an invention has been described in a printed publication anywhere in the world, or if it has been in public use or on sale in the U.S. before the date that the applicant made his/her invention, or if an invention has been in public use or on sale in the U.S. more than one year before the date of filing of the application. It does not matter whether the use or publication was by the inventor himself.

An application must be filed within one year of any publication, public demonstration, or sale of the invention.

Therefore, a search of the published literature is essential in order to know if "your" invention has been previously used or described.
    
    
  Finding Articles in the Sci/Tech (and Popular) Literature
    
  For a complete list of our Research Database subscriptions, see the Library Web site:
http://www.cooper.edu/facilities/library/library.html and follow links under Article Indexes.
  
The following databases may be useful for your project:
    
 
  • Applied Science & Technology Abstracts (ASTA)
    Covers 400 scientific and technical publications, including trade and industrial publications, and journals of professional and technical societies.
    Contains article citations and abstracts, also links to some full-text articles.

  • Compendex (a.k.a. Engineering Index)
    Web version covers engineering literature from 1970 to date.
    For earlier years: 1884 -1989: Printed volumes on Index shelves in Library.

  • SciFinder Scholar (Chemical Abstracts and more):
    The world's largest collection of organic and inorganic substance information; more than 13 million single- and multi-step reactions; more than 1 billion predicted and experimental properties; includes citations to patents filed in more than 50 countries for new chemical substances.
      
  • ArticleFirst
    An index to articles in over 13,000 journals, covering a wide range of subject areas. Popular as well as scholarly publications. Some links to full text articles.

  • EbscoHost MasterFile Select:
    Full text from over 750 periodicals, some including PDF images; indexing and abstracts for over 2,000 periodicals covering nearly all subjects, including art, architecture, engineering, design, business, economics and much more.
      
  • ASME, ASCE, and IEEE journals
    The Library offers web access to all of the journals published by these engineering societies. ASME and ASCE journals from 1993 to date are available via our web subscription; IEEE journals are available from 1988 to date.
    From the Cooper Library website, select Engineering & Science, then e-journals and e-texts.
    For older artciles, use Compendex to search Engineering literature back to 1970.
   
   
  REMOTE ACCESS TO COOPER LIBRARY DATABASES
    
 

You can use our databases (except for SciFinder Scholar) from computers outside the cooper.edu domain, but you need to be in good standing with the Library to do so (no fines totaling five dollars or more, and no other blocks on your library registration record). On the main Cooper Library web page, click on Off Campus Database Access (last item in the Article Indexes section). Enter your Library barcode number (on the back of your Cooper I.D. card), and you will see a list of available databases.

   
    
      Last updated April 22, 2008