Engineering
- Sheridan Libraries
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- Engineering
- Patents and Trademarks
Patents Help
Jim Gillispie - jeg@jhu.edu
JHU Technologies
- Includes the university offices which oversee sponsored projects including contracts, grants, and funding opportunities
- Provides administrative support and resources for JHU researchers, on issues such as compliance, policies and regulations, funding, forms, training, and technology transfer
- Helps Hopkins inventors and researchers with licensing, patenting, and technology commercialization
All About Patents
Guides and Tutorials
- Patents and Patentability -- Slides from the U. Minnesota Libraries
- Patent Search Tutorial -- Pages from U. Pennsylvania Libraries (use link on lower right of each page to go to next page)
- How to Conduct a Preliminary Patent Search: a step-by-step strategy -- U.S. PTO (Patent and Trademark Office)
Definitions (from this page of the U.S. PTO):
| Patent | Trademark | Copyright |
|---|---|---|
| "Technical inventions, such as chemical compositions like pharmaceutical drugs, mechanical processes like complex machinery, or machine designs that are new, unique, and usable in some type of industry." | "A word, phrase, design, or a combination that identifies your goods or services, distinguishes them from the goods or services of others, and indicates the source of your goods or services." | "Artistic, literary, or intellectually created works, such as novels, music, movies, software code, photographs, and paintings that are original and exist in a tangible medium, such as paper, canvas, film, or digital format." |
| Example: "A new type of hybrid engine" | Example: "Coca-Cola® for soft drinks" | Example: "Song lyrics to 'Let It Go' from 'Frozen'" |
START with this database -- their patent TITLES have a lot of extra added detail to help you see exactly what it's about.
- Over 14 million national + international patents with links to cited and citing patents, and cited articles
- Many links to full-text patent -- box in upper left that says "original" (but no way to restrict search to full-text only)
- Covers patents in the fields of chemistry, engineering, and electronics
- Patent coverage back to 1963; citations to 1973
- Search by topic, inventor, or assignee
- Tutorial about how to use Derwent (only 5 1/2 minutes)
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
- Search the full text of patents since Jan 1, 1976
- Patents issued from 1790 through 1975 are searchable only by patent number and current U.S. classifications
- Full-page images are available back to 1790, and require a TIFF image viewer
- Find chemical compounds, chemical reactions, chemical properties, related bibliographic data, and substance data with synthesis planning information (REAXYS replaced Beilstein Crossfire and Gmelin Crossfire)
- (1) Do your search, (2) THEN use "document type" (on left) to choose patents, (3) then LIMIT your search
- Chemical patent literature and associated properties are also included
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You can search by patent number of patent country code
MORE (including where to find applications)
Espacenet -- Free worldwide patent search engine from the European Patent Office. More than 110 million European patent documents worldwide, from 1836+. "User-friendly interface available in almost all European languages."
Google Patents -- After you do a search, use the fields in the left column to narrow your search
Japan Platform for Patent Information -- Patents from Japan. (English and Japanese interfaces.)PAT2PDF -- Enter a patent number to find and download patents from the USPTO
PatentScope -- From the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO). "Access to the full text of international Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications on the day of publication, and to patents of participating national and regional patent offices." Search by keywords, names of applicants, IPC, and other ways.
United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office
Applications -- Patents that have been applied for, but not yet granted or denied.FreshPatents -- Also U.S. PTO patent applications, on a different platform
Glossary
| DII | Derwent Innovations Index |
| IPC Codes |
International Patent Classification (IPC) Codes
|
| Derwent Class Codes |
|
| Derwent Manual Codes |
|
| WIPO |
World Intellectual Property Organization It controls the IPC codes -- Here's an easy way to explore the whole list of IPC codes |
How To Search in Derwent
1. Search for something. Start with TOPIC, but if you get too many results, switch to TITLE or to one of the other choices in the drop-down. Add a row if you want to, and always fix the dates.
2. If you have too many results, add words to the TITLE, or search by an additional choice in the drop-down, such as Derwent Class Code. Click the icon on the right to see the list.
The three class codes and their subdivisions are Chemical, Engineering, and Electrical and Electronic.To go with my "infusion pump" search, I chose Engineering --> General --> Health..., which is P3.
--- ADD that, and then Add to Query:
3. Your search words will be highlighted. Subject areas and other filters are on the left, to help you refine your results:
4. All 409 results have the Class Code of P31. Now refine them -- one way is to choose the most popular IPC code:
5. Every record will list all of the codes that apply to that record:
6. Again, the big advantage of using Derwent over the other patent databases and tools is that these titles have been expanded so that you know exactly what the patent is about.
- However, you can also combine USPTO and Google Patents to get good results -- don't use Google Patents alone because it's incomplete, has scanning errors, and doesn't include the most recent patents.