Engineering Research Guide:Patent Searching

A guide to patent searching, including relevant databases and websites.

Patent Databases

Derwent Innovations Index™ facilitates rapid, precise patent searching, letting you conduct patent and citation searches of inventions in chemical, electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering.

Comprehensive coverage of literature in chemistry and related fields, including articles, patents, characterized chemicals, chemical reactions, and commercial sources.

Access to all U.S. patents and U.S. patent applications. Can examine patent class definitions. and use search box on this page for keyword searching of class definitions. Search interface is still clumsy, recommend other databases on this page for non-classification searching.

The PATENTSCOPE database provides access to international Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications in full text format on the day of publication, as well as to patent documents of participating national and regional patent offices.

How to Search for Patents

If you are new to patent searches, or want to use the functionality that was available in the USPTO’s PatFT/AppFT, select ‘Basic Search’ to look for patents by keywords or common fields, such as inventor or publication number. Select ‘Advanced Search’ to use full query options as well as to further filter a patent search by database or organize documents through tagging.

Free Patent Web Sites

Google Patents has 120 million patents from 100 countries. Keyword and classification searching, ability to download bulk data.

The Lens serves all patents and scholarly works, with keyword/classification searching and ability to download bulk data. Has 141 million patents from 90+ countries.

EspaceNet has120 million patents from 100 countries, keyword and classification searching, and ability to download bulk data.

The PATENTSCOPE database provides access to international Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications in full text format on the day of publication, as well as to patent documents of participating national and regional patent offices.

This database serves as a resource for policy makers and members of the general public interested in fields like genomics, genetics and biotechnology. The DNA Patent Database (DPD) contains a collection of DNA-based patents and patent applications issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and makes the full-text of such patents and applications available to users at no cost.

The IPO has direct administrative responsibility for examining and issuing or rejecting patents, and maintaining registers of intellectual property including patents, designs and trademarks in the UK.

From this site you can get access to the European Patent Office's search engine. It is a free Internet service from the European Patent Organization. You can use it to search 90 million patent documents from all over the world from 1836 to today. All the tools and information that inventors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, researchers and enterprises need to conduct business with the European Patent Office are listed on this page.  The European Patent Office's search engine, Espacenet is a free Internet service from the European Patent Organization.  Espacenet learning resources, including tutorials and recorded webinars, are available.