Search Engines – Patent Database
What are patent databases?
Services designed to enable various types of patent searches
How to use patent databases?
- Conducting a patent search is an art
- Requires effective searching of relevant patents & non-patent literature, using search strings, technical keywords & various operators
- Should ensure accuracy and exhaustiveness
- Search in multiple databases means better search quality and reduced risk of missing results
Which patent databases can be used?
- Can use free and paid databases
- Various database services differ in:
- Coverages (jurisdictions, historical, non-English language patents)
- Accuracy (frequency of updation of legal status & new applications)
- Document elements that are accessible & searchable (titles, abstracts, description, claims, or other elements)
- Search tools, functionalities, retrieval of relevant results, and visualization & analysis of results
- Backend methodologies (data processing, management of assignee corporate trees, accurate translations of foreign language patents)
Free commercial databases:
- Google Patents
- Patent Lens
- Freepatentsonline
- PQAI (Patent Quality through Artificial Intelligence)
Free databases provided by WIPO and national & regional offices:
- Patentscope by WIPO
- Espacenet
- USPTO Patent Database
- IPO
- Databases of Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Korea, UK, etc.
Fee-based commercial databases:
- PatBase
- Patseer
- Questel Orbit
- SciFinder
- STN
- Thomson Innovation (Thomson Reuters)
- Total Patent (LexisNexis)