A patent is a legal right to exclude others from the commercial exploitation of a novel, useful, and non-obvious invention. Patents are granted by a government agency for a limited term, in exchange for the public disclosure of the invention and its workings. The US government agency that grants patents is the US Patent and Trademark Office.
General information concerning patents
The USPTO's plain-language overview of patents and the patenting process.
Note: the recommended browser for these tutorials is Chrome.
Most patent information is openly available online. Patent databases and search engines vary by breadth of contents, national or international coverage, basic interfaces and advanced search tools.
1. Search by classification.
The most effective way to search for patents for a specific area of technology is to identify the most relevant classes and subclasses in the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) scheme.
Recommended: search by keyword in a patents database, find a relevant patent, then review its CPC classes and subclasses. In Google Patents, look for "Classifications".
Other strategies: (a) ask an AI tool for examples of CPC classes used for x technology; (b) browse the full CPC Scheme listing all CPC classes; (c) run keyword searches for matching classes with the USPTO's Classification Text Search.
2. Search by field.
Patent fields include inventor, assignee (owner), and patent number. Field searching is most useful for finding a known patent or patents held by a known person or corporation.
3. Search by keyword.
An increasing proportion of patents are available online with full text, making keyword searching more effective. But keyword searches may retrieve an overwhelming number of results or may fail to reflect the technical language used in patent writing. Use keyword searching (1) as a step to identify classes and subclasses; and (2) to supplement classification searching.
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