Introduction

Patents are defined as "A licence to manufacture, sell, or deal in an article or commodity, to the exclusion of other persons; in modern times, a grant from a government to a person or persons conferring for a certain definite time the exclusive privilege of making, using, or selling some new invention." (Oxford English Dictionary 2^nd edition)

Patent literature is a rich source of technical and research data much of which is never published or disclosed elsewhere. In addition, patents and patent applications are often published earlier than academic papers.

There are generally 4 types of patents:

UTILITY Patents

Utility Patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof. This is the primary type of U.S. Patent.

DESIGN Patents

Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture.

PLANT Patents

Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plants.

REISSUE Patents

Reissue Patents are granted if there is a substantial error or errors in the original patent.

In addition to the USPTO and esp@cenet databases linked to below, there are a number of other resources available to UCD that index patent literature. Among those are: BIOSIS, METADEX, NTIS and SciFinder Scholar. For information on how to access and search these resources, see the PSE Databases page.

Selected Patent Resources

• United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
  • Independent Inventor Resources
  • USPTO Patent Search Tutorial from McKinney Engineering Library at the University of Texas at Austin.
• Conducting a Patent Search at a Patent and Trademark Depository Library (PTDL)
  • List of Patent and Trademark Libraries in the United States
• Patent Offices (list maintained by the British Library)
• UC Davis Innovation Access
• Guide to Patent Research
  
  Detailed information and assistance for patents, patent classification and patent searching is available from the UC Davis Government Information and Maps Department.
• Essentials of Patents (PSE T333 .G53 2003)
• Filing Patents Online: A Professional Guide (requires UCD IP)
• Patent Fundamentals for Scientists and Engineers. 2nd ed. (requires UCD IP)
• Title 35 -- U.S. Code -- Patents
• Title 37 -- Code of Federal Regulations Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights
• FreePatentsOnline
• pat2pdf.org
• Patent of the Week
• Wacky Patent of the Month

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