Guides: Patent Resources & Intellectual Property Guide: Patent Resources

Types of Patents

There are 3 main types of patents:

Utility: for the new and useful process, machine, manufacture, the composition of matter or any new and useful improvement thereof.
Design: appearance of an item is protected. Patent must be an original design for a manufactured item.
Plant: for invented or discovered and asexually reproduced distinct and new variety of plant, including cultivated sports, mutants, hybrids, newly found seedlings, and living organisms.

WPI's Intellectual Property & Innovation Office has an Intellectual Property Inventory Catalog, which lists the patent applications and granted patents from WPI researchers.

LexisNexis Academic -- Now called Nexis Uni This link opens in a new window
Total Patent One - provides a wide range of full text IP news, legal, and business information. Also includes full text patents (Choose Legal, then on right Patents) to search a combined file (back to 1790) of the utility, plant and design patents, including reissue patents, reexamination certificates, statutory invention registrations and defensive publications.
Coverage: Varies
Full Text: Yes

SciFinder Web - Chemical Abstracts Service
1907 - Present: for searching chemical and chemical engineering literature including patents.

USPTO Patent Search
The Patent Public Search tool is a new web-based patent search application. If you are new to patent searches, select ‘Basic Search’ to look for patents by keywords or common fields, such as inventor or publication number. Select ‘Advanced Search’ to use full query options as well as to further filter a patent search by database or organize documents through tagging.
USPTO Classification Searches
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Learn to use classification searches for more precision.

Some patent sites require a tiff image viewer, such as the free AlternaTIFF plug-in. Another option is to convert patents to PDF using pat2pdf.org.

Espacenet Patent Search (European Patent Office) This link opens in a new window
Search International patent search with full images in PDF format.
Coverage: 1970-
Full Text: Yes
FPO (Free Patents Online) This link opens in a new window
Provides free patent searching of U.S. and European registrations. Benefits include patents in PDF format as well as hyperlinked classification searching.
Coverage: 1976-
Full Text: Yes
Google Patents This link opens in a new window
Search and display U.S. patents 1790 to the present using the technology that powers Google Book Search, with the ability to scroll and zoom in on text and illustrations.
Coverage: 1790-
Full Text: Yes
Patent Lens This link opens in a new window
A worldwide, open-access, free patent informatics resource. Search and retrieve the full-text of millions of patent documents from US, Europe, Australia and WIPO, their status and counterparts up to 70 countries. Free PDF downloads for US, Australian, PCT and European patent documents.
Coverage: 1976-
Full Text: Yes

PatentScope This link opens in a new window
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) PATENTSCOPE Search Service enables users search fulltext of over 1.6 million published international patent applications.
Coverage: 1978-
Full Text: No