Patent Searching

Among reasons to do patent searching are the following:
1) To find information about an area that is a candidate for a utility (based on usefulness) patent. Often there is an early insight into groundbreaking accomplishments in an area that are not published elsewhere.
2) You have an idea and you want to see if there is a patent out there that is related to your idea. You will want to do a "prior art" search (search for granted patents in the same area). This search can only be considered a complete search if you are searching for all patents in the class(es)/subclass(es) related to your idea.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office Web site <http://www.uspto.gov/> will only provide keyword searching for patents back to the early 1970's. Keyword searching may be appropriate as a method for locating information (1) and may assist the searcher in finding a class/subclass to search (2).

• Try Google Patents for earlier keyword searching. http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en

European Patent Office - Espacenet ep.espacenet.com/ - search European, Japanese, and Worldwide Patents.

World Intellectual Property Organization - portal http://www.wipo.int/portal/index.html.en. PatentScope is the search interface at http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/

• This facility allows you to search 1,369,142 international patent applications
• View the latest information and documents available to the International Bureau.

The UNL Engineering Library is a United States patent and trademark depository library and has access to WEST – the database used by the USPTO patent examiners.

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE PATENT CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM
http://www.uspto.gov
Three major classifications for utility patents:
(1) General and Mechanical - Examples
• Class 137 Fluid Handling
• Class 198 Conveyors: Power-Driven
• Class 297 Chairs and Seats

(2) Chemical - Examples
• Class 260 Chemistry of Carbon Compounds
• Class 435 Chemistry: Molecular Biology and Microbiology

(3) Electrical - Examples
• Class 363 Electric Power Conversion Systems
• Class 369 Dynamic Information Storage or Retrieval
• Class 455 TelecommunicationsIndex to the U.S. Patent Classification System
http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/uspcindex/indextouspc.htm

Manual of Patent Classification http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/classification/