Research Guides: Patents: Databases for Finding Patents

Freely Available Databases

Granted patents and patent applications are accessible from a variety of sources. Here are some great sources to use.

Patent Public Search
From the USPTO: The Patent Public Search tool is a new web-based patent search application that will replace internal legacy search tools PubEast and PubWest and external legacy search tools PatFT and AppFT.
Google Patent Search
Indexes U.S. patents from 1790s to present. Includes full-text when freely available. Use the Advanced search and Prior Art Finder for better results. Great for keyword searching.
PatentScope- World International Property Office (WIPO)
Includes 51 million patent documents, with 2.8 million published international Patent Cooperation Treaty applications (PCT) in full-text. Allows for searching in multiple languages. Recommended for searching for patents of smaller countries whose patents might be hard to find.
European Patent Office
Searchable database of the European Patent Office that offers access to more than 90 million patent documents from around the world and contains information about inventions and technical developments from 1836 to today. Includes U.S. patents.
Free Patents Online
Mainly USPTO patents but has RSS feeds to help you stay current/alert
Lens
Database for patent and scholarly search. Serves global patent and scholarly knowledge as a public good to inform science and technology enabled problem solving.

Engineering Village This link opens in a new window
All engineering disciplines
IEEE Xplore This link opens in a new window
Provides access to the full text of IEEE content published since 1988. Includes journals, transactions, and magazines, early access documents, conference proceedings, IEEE published standards and Standards Dictionary Online, and a collection of IEEE/Wiley e-books.
PatentPak This link opens in a new window
Locate the important chemistry in a patent
ACM Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Includes bibliographic information, abstracts, reviews, and full texts of materials published by the Association for Computing Machinery since its inception.