A patent protects a process or invention. It ensures that the owner has the sole right to make, use, or sell, or grant permission to others to do so. In return for this protection, the inventor must disclose technical details of the invention which are published by national Patent Offices.
Patents are a vital source of technical information and can also be a useful source of information about a company for prospective careers.
There are several databases you can search to find patents:
Patents in Chemical, Engineering, and Electrical & Electronic areas; with links to cited and citing patents, relevant literature, and patent data sources.
Contains all the patent documentation available to European Patent Office examiners and the latest patent applications from all the EPO member states.
Search over 7 million freely available U.S. patents. Patent information includes a summary, details of any claims made, drawings and citations. You can also choose to search for keywords within individual patents.
The Patents Publication Enquiry Service covers all GB applications published and granted after 3 January 2007 and all GB corrected documents published after 1 April 2010.
Full text US patents and published applications. Patents from 1790 to 1975 are searchable only by Patent Number and Current US Classification. From 1976 they are searchable by all fields.
You can search for patents using:
Classification codes are used to group patents by type of technical information: