Engineering
- Sheridan Libraries
- Guides
- 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
Getting Started
Patent |
Provisional utility or plant patent is a "quick and inexpensive way for inventors to establish a U.S. filing date for their invention, which can be claimed in a later-filed nonprovisional application. A provisional application is automatically abandoned 12 months after its filing date and is not examined." |
|
|
Copyright |
|
Trademark |
|
Patent searching requires patience -- give yourself time.
- Brief review of basics of patents (U. Minnesota Libraries)
- Tutorials on patent searching (listed by Penn State)
-
Guide to Patent Searching (U. Michigan Library)
Patent Databases
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
-
You can search by patent number of patent country code
-
PATENTSCOPE (from 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.
-
EspacenetMore than 110 million European patent documents worldwide, from 1836+. "User-friendly interface available in almost all European languages." Use either the old ("classic") or new platform.
-
Japan Patent OfficePatents from Japan. (English and Japanese interfaces.)
More Patents and Patent Applications
Here are places to find patents that have been applied for, but not yet granted or denied.
- U.S. PTO patent applications
- FreshPatents -- Also U.S. PTO patent applications, on a different platform
General
- Google Patents -- After you do a search, use the fields in the left column to narrow your search
- PAT2PDF -- Enter a patent number to find and download patents from the USPTO
International
- Espacenet -- Free worldwide patent search engine from the European Patent Office. Patents from over 90 countries, from 1836 to the present
- Japan Platform for Patent Information (in English)
- PatentScope -- From the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO)
- United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office
Searching Patents in Derwent Innovations Index
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 |
1. Search for something. You can use TOPIC or TITLE; if you get too many hits from TOPIC, switch to TITLE. always notice the years. Add a row if you want to.
2. Or, you can start your search by looking at lists for Inventor, IPC codes, Class codes, Manual codes, or Assignee. Use "select from list" on the left.
3. If you have too many results, add words to the TITLE. Change the dates if you want to.
4. Your search words are highlighted. Codes for IPC, classes, and manual are on the bottom left.
5. Most of these have IPC codes that start with the same thing. So let's click BACK, and put that beginning of that popular IPC code onto another line, with an asterisk -- this will get all of the IPC codes that *start* with this.
-- Note that this strategy will get you MORE results.
-- Also, in every record, you can click on the IPC codes and see all of them.
6. Derwent Class Codes are divided into 20 broad subject areas.
7. 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 decent results -- don't use Google Patents alone because it's incomplete, has scanning errors, and doesn't include the most recent patents.