What is a patent?
A patent is a right to the inventor, in exchange for public disclosure, to exclude others from making, selling, importing or using the invention for a limited period of time in the territory for which the right is granted.
There are no "world patents". Application must be filed in each country. Patenting cooperation treaties, such as World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and European Patent Office (EPO), can help to simplify the process.
The invention can be patented only when it is new, inventive and useful. Patents are published so that other people can benefit from the information they contain.
Patents are important resources for research. The Library recommends researchers and students with an interest in patents and intellectual property consult Griffith Enterprise or another source of expertise.
Patent databases
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The LensThe Lens serves 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. The Lens will allow document collections, aggregations, and analyses to be shared, annotated, and embedded to forge open mapping of the world of knowledge-directed innovation.
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IP AustraliaIP Australia is the federal government agency that grants rights in patents, trade marks and designs. The web site provides information about intellectual property in Australia and the functions of the agency. Databases can be searched for patent applications, trade marks and registered designs.
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esp@cenetesp@cenet is Europe's network of patent databases. It contains over 60 million patent documents from all over the world. The full text of patent applications and patents hadndled by the European Patent Office may be searched, as may international patent applications published by the World Intellectual Property Organization.
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United States Patent and Trademark OfficeContains the full text of United States patents issued since 1976.
Guides for searching
- Patents are a combination of a technical document and a legal document. While they must describe an invention in sufficient detail for someone else "skilled in the art" to recreate it, the language used may not be the same language that you would expect in a journal article on the topic.
So, a simple keyword search is unlikely to be comprehensive. - A search by patent classifcation number enhances your search result.
- If you need a comprehensive search to determine if you have a patentable invention, you will ultimately need to consult a professional patent searcher.
