LibGuides: Physics and Astronomy: Patents

Help with Patent Searching

Patents Video Tutorial (MIT)
Patent Searching: Patent Basics (Clemson U.)
Using Patent Databases (UTexas)
Seven Step Strategy
From the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), this is a suggested Seven Step Strategy for conducting preliminary searches of U.S. patents and published applications using free online resources of the USPTO and its bi-lateral partner EPO (European Patent Office).

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Search full text of patents back to 1976.
European Patent Office - Espacenet
Searches U.S. patents' full text back to 1920, plus patents from dozens of countries.

Engineering Village
Search Compendex, Geobase, and Inspec for your topic and limit to PATENT in Document field.

Contains the Compendex (1969-present), Ei Backfile (Engineering Index from 1884-1968), Inspec (1969-present), and Inspec backfile (1896-1968) databases for searching on a broad range of topics within the scientific, applied science, technical, and engineering disciplines. Users must have pop-ups enabled on their browser for this resource to work. Click here to view short videos on how to quickly search and retrieve the most relevant engineering research available.

Google Patents
Commercial patent databases (Google, FreePatentsOnline, etc.) rely on OCR and are very error-prone. Use with caution!
The Lens
Stands out from other non-patent-office-related databases for two reasons: first, it is noncommercial, and thus has no advertising; and, second, it allows gene-sequence searching, which is a feature unique to this database.