Patents & Trademarks

U.S. and international patents and trademarks.

Starting a Patent Search for Prior Art

Advanced Google Patents
Google Patents covers U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) since 1790; European Patent Office (EPO) and World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) since 1978. Also: Basic Google Patents.
U.S. Patent & Trademark Office
USPTO, a federal agency in the Department of Commerce, includes extensive information on Patents and Trademarks as well as a Patent Tutorial. Obtain copies of forms, information on fee structure and extensive general information on U.S. patents and trademarks. The Patent Full-Text Database is searchable back to 1790. The years 1790-1975 can be searched by class and patent number only.
Patent Application and Full Text and Image Database (USPTO)
European Patent Office (Espacenet)
Provides indexing and full text pantents and applications from European and other patent offices worldwide, including U.S., Japan, and Germany. (EP, WIPO/PCT, US, GB, FR, DE, JP, and over 70 countries). You can save PDFs of available documents up to a certain page limit. This is the site SciFinder links to for non-U.S. patents. 1836-present

SciFinder Web
Indexes and cross-references worldwide chemical patents. Note: PatentPak is an add-on workflow tool within SciFinder to enhance access to and analysis of full text patent documents. UTSA does not subscribe to PatentPak functionality apart from 5 free trial uses per user account.
Nexis Uni
Patent search available from top drop-down menu.

Patent Front Page Data
Parts of a patent explained. From Michael White at Queen's University Library.