Summary
Discover how to search for patents.
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Table of Contents
What is a patent?
A patent is the exclusive right for a period of time to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention. Patents are part of Intellectual Property. Intellectual property refers to creations of the intellect, such as inventions, literary and artistic works, and designs.
Why search for patents?
Searching for patents may help you to achieve the following:
- identify new research areas;
- prevent research duplication (novelty search);
- find information about business activities; or
- identify experts in the field.
How and where to search for patents
The search strategy you will use depends on the information you have beforehand.
Searching for a specific patent
You may search for a specific patent of which you know the name of the inventor, owner, assignee, patent number, etc. In this case, limit your search to specific fields to retrieve the relevant patents efficiently. You can try The Lens, Espacenet or Google Patents, all three search engines offer extensive coverage. Make sure you fill in the information in the required format.
Exploring patent literature
Note that novelty searches are tricky to do. You can contact WUR Library or a patent attorney if you plan to do a novelty search. Be aware that patent attorneys will charge for their services.
The simplest way is to search with keywords. Be mindful about the keywords you will choose; most patents will not include the product name, trade name, and they will not even be about a complete product, but instead about a specific aspect of the technology in that product. For example, if you are searching for a patent for a precision farming vehicle, patents could be about “obstacle detection using stereo vision” or “grain mass flow estimation”.
Once you have found interesting patents, you can also check in which domain they are classified and explore further into these classifications.
Patent databases and their training resources
Espacenet
Espacenet, provided by the European Patent Office, offers free access to over 150 million patent documents worldwide from 1782 to the present. You can explore it to discover new inventions, identify inventors no matter if you are an experienced user or a beginner.
WIPO - PATENTSCOPE
WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) provides access to the PATENSCOPE database. It gives you access to internationally filed Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications as well as patent documents of participating national and regional patent offices with machine translation in many different languages.
USPTO
The USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) gives access to a search engine for US only patents and patents applications. It provides a web-based interface for detailed searching and viewing of full-text U.S. patent documents.
The Lens
The Lens is a free, open-access database for patents and scholarly literature. You can search with keywords by classification and by jurisdiction.
Access The Lens (Patent search) – Knowledge base Lens Patent Search
SciFindern
SciFinderⁿ provides access to chemical literature and patents from all around the world.
Access SciFindern - SciFindern – training module on patent searching
Google Patents
Google Patents includes over 120 million patent publications from more than 100 patent offices worldwide. It also integrates technical papers and books indexed in Google Scholar and Google Books, as well as documents from the Prior Art Archive.
Questions and support
Do you have questions about this service, or would you like personal support? Feel free to contact us. You can send an email to library.collections@wur.nl. For information on how to patent your invention, contact Value Creating & Cooperation.
Curious to find out what else WUR Library can offer you?
Visit the Library's website to access the Library’s databases and get a full overview of the Library’s services, tools, and support. You can contact a librarian anytime through the chat box on our website or click Chat online. We’re happy to help you!