Patents: Finding Patents

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The Lens Institutional Toolkit covers over 100 million patent documents from around the world. It provides access to nearly all of the patent documents in the world as open, annotatable digital public goods that are integrated with scholarly and technical literature along with regulatory and business data. All Institutional Users (e.g. staff and students at the University of Cambridge) can also access an Institutional User API Plan while logged in as an institutional user. Register for an account with your Cambridge email for institutional user access to the API.

Derwent Innovations Index facilitates rapid, precise patent searching, letting you conduct patent and citation searches of inventions in chemical, electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. This resource merges the value-added patent information from Derwent World Patents Index® with the patent citation information from Derwent Patent Citation Index®.

An A-Z selection of other free patent search tools

• African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) Search System - The African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) regional IP database includes information on patents, industrial designs, utility models, copyright and plant varieties from 20 African countries. ARIPO also works with member states to provide IP protection for traditional knowledge.
• Canadian Patent Database - The Canadian Patent Database contains all Canadian patents (both applications and granted patents) since 1924. Contains only bibliographic data, titles and images. No abstracts or claims data are available for patents granted prior to August 15, 1978.
• CNIPA Patent Search and Analysis - The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) offers a free search engine for Chinese patent information. Click "English" for the English language version of the site.
• DESIGN view (DS View) - Search over 18 million designs from across European Union and beyond.
• Espacenet. European Patent Office patent search tool with access to information about inventions and technical developments from the 19th century to the present. How to use espacenet video.
• Google Patents - Search and read the full text of patents from around the world. Use Advanced Search for for specialized searches
• IPSUM | Intellectual Property Office - An online service which lets you check the status and access information on UK patent applications.
• Japan Platform for Patent Information (J-PlatPat) - Provides information on Japanese patents, utility models, designs, and trademarks. Machine-generated English translations are available.
• Korea Industrial Property Rights Information Services (KIPRIS) - Covers domestic and foreign industrial property information such as patents, utility models, trademarks, and designs owned by the Korean Intellectual Property Office
• pat2pdf - This is a free website that will allow you to enter a U.S. patent number and retrieve a PDF version of the patent.
• PATENTSCOPE - Patent search tool from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Includes cross-lingual information retrieval and machine translation for several languages. Searches worldwide patents and links to documents in their national databases.
• Prior Art Archive - Developed as a collaboration between the MIT Media Lab, Cisco, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), this open-access repository archives prior art in a variety of formats, including Word documents, web pages, Excel spreadsheets, images, and videos.
• USPTO database - United States Patent and Trademark Office patent search.