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Mechanical Engineering Home >Info: Useful Links > Patent

• Patent Basics -- Written at the U
• USPTO -- Home page for the US Patent and Trademark Office
• General Information Concerning Patents -- More detailed information from the USPTO
• Inventor Resources -- Inventor resources from the USPTO
• European Patent Office
• The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) -- UN agency responsible for intergovernmental issues of intellectual property
• Wacky Patent of the Month -- From the Law Office of Michael J. Colitz, Jr. and Associates
• Gallery of Obscure Patents -- From the Delphion patent server
• General information about patents -- From the Law Firm of Oppedahl & Larson (includes information about costs)
• Federal Circuit -- Appellate court for all patent trials
• Intellectual Property Today -- Leading trade magazine for patent attorneys.

• Patent searching at the Minneapolis Public Library.

• Official US Patent and Trademark Office site for searching the US patent database. Very good, very fast. Returns abstract and other info. Full text. Contains every patent from 1976 to the present. You can also order paper copies of patents from this site. This is the place to start if you just want the basics.
• Delphion Intellectual Property Network Patent Server - Formerly the IBM server. Extremely good resource. Returns patents from 1971 with full abstract text, and claims. Artwork returned on patents since 1980. Full patent text is stored in picture format, and hardcopies can be ordered. Fast and easy to use. Use this one for full information on a patent.
  **WARNING** The earliest patents listed on this server are numbered somewhere around 3,600,000. That means if you restrict yourself to searching on this server, you are missing over 3 million patents. This can matter, particularly for mechanical products. For more details on searching, see the book "Patent it Yourself" by D Pressman. Also has European patent applications from 1979, European patents issued from 1980, first pages of Japanese patents from 1976 and front pages of IPO publications from 1990. For a complete description of the IBM collections, look on the "About IPN" link.
  
  Secondary Sites
  • Pat2pdf - Free site that converts U.S. patents to pdf files. Simpler than the USPTO TIFF viwer for complete images of a patent.
  • Micropatent's PatentWEB Good, but it costs money for all but the first page of the patent.
  • STO Patent Search System- Good for classification searches. Abstracts for 1981-1989 only. Used to be popular before the USPTO came on-line.
  • University of North Carolina's Online Manual of Classification- Allows searches for patent titles and numbers via class/subclass. Returns title and number, but nothing else.
  • US Patent Search - A service where you can print patents as multiple pages rather than one-at-a-time method at the USPTO site. You have to know the patent number. Limit of three viewings per day under the free service.
    
  Patent Resources Online

• Online resources for searching foreign patents at the University of Washington
• IPO.org, a comprehensive source of information on intellectual property