patent searches

This page offers pointers to searching of Australian and overseas patent databases.

It covers -

• resources
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Canada
• trilateral First Page database
• US
• Espacenet
• other European databases
• WIPO
• other

     resources

As a starting point the Australian Industrial Property Office (AIPO) site provides an introduction to local and overseas database searches.

Consultation of its detailed Manual of Practice & Procedure (MPP) is suggested.

     Australia

AIPO's patent databases are here.

     New Zealand

The Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) is here. IPONZ's patent and design search engines accept a variety of criteria, including class, party, date and action.

     Canada

The multilingual Canadian patent database features basic and advanced searching in French and English. It covers 75 years of Canadian patent descriptions and images. Canada's site also gives access to the European Patent Office, USPTO, Japanese Patent Office and WIPO Patent Cooperation Treaty records.

     trilateral First Page database

The Trilateral Site - which encompasses the European Patent Office (EPO), the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) - offers public access to the First Page database, providing core information that is generally found on the first page of a patent or application.

First Page contains the bibliographic data, abstract and representative drawing of patent gazettes published by the EPO, France, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, Japan, United States and the World Intellectual Property Organization.

     US

The US Patent & Trademarks Office site offers free access to two patent databases.

The patent grants database contains images of patents issued since 1790 and the full text of patents issued since 1976, with minor omissions (highlighted in a list of missing patents).

A second database contains the full text and full-page images of patent applications published since March 2001.

     Espacenet

Many nations use the European Patent Office's Espacenet site, which enables detailed searching (including nested Boolean searches) of the EPO, PCT and major national databases.

Each national collection is identified using the two character ISO country code identifier, managed by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency and also used in the internet domain name scheme discussed here. (A list of nations covered by Espacenet is here.)

The site features an automated translation facility, which we suggest should be used with particular caution.

The online EU Community Design database was launched in September 2005, covering Community Designs (ie protection for the entire European Union as an alternative to national filings). It can be searched by Locarno classification, applicant, title or design number. The search results list supplies the main image and brief details; it thus useful when looking for similarities.

     other European databases

Most European countries have separate engines in their national languages, including Austria, Liechtenstein, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Eire, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Monaco, Portugal and Sweden. 

There are similar engines for the patent records of former Soviet bloc states that have been invited to join the European Patent Convention.

     WIPO

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), discussed in our Intellectual Property guide, provides limited access to recent patent information under the PCT.

Its PCT database indexes the contents of First Page data from 1997 onwards. The search engine is comparable to that of the USPTO.

     other

The CAMBIA site allows free full-text searching of agricultural biotechnology patents and applications from the EPO, WIPO and the USPTO (1976-2000).

Freepatentsonline.com offers searches of US applications and granted patents.

The European Intellectual Property Association (EIPAWEB) site features information on European Database Patents.





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