Google Patents

Google Patents is a search engine from Google that indexes patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which are taken from the original USPTO database (which is in the public domain). All 7 million patents have been put in the database. Optical character recognition (OCR) has been performed on the pages to make them searchable. This searchability includes all US patents.

History and background

The service was launched on December 14, 2006. Google says it uses "the same technology as that underlying Google Books",cite web|url=http://www.google.com/googlepatents/about.html|title=About page|work=Google Patents site|accessmonthday=December 29|accessyear=2006] allowing scrolling through pages, and zooming in on areas.cite web|url=http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-you-can-search-for-us-patents.html|title=Patent announce page|work=official Google Blog site|accessmonthday=December 29|accessyear=2006] The images are saveable as PNG files but can be converted with a graphics program to TIFF files which can be OCRed.

Review and criticisms

The indexing is not perfect. Reportedly, as of 14 December, not all IBM patents were locatable, as searching for IBM patents retrieved only 1,197 results on Google Patents, but that IBM received nearly 3,000 patents in 2005 alone.cite web|url=http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/12/14/google-patent-search-tech-media_cx_rr_1214patents.html|title=Digital Media - Google Searches Patents|author=Rachel Rosmarin|work=Forbes.com site|accessmonthday=December 29|accessyear=2006]

Unlike Google Patents, Espacenet includes US patent applications as well as granted patents. European Patent Office, [http://www.european-patent-office.org/news/epidosnews/epd_1_07/pinews_0107_en.pdf "Google launches patent search facility"] , "Patent Information News", Issue 1, 2007, page 2. ] In terms of response time however, the performance of Google Patents is considered to be very good.

Example

An example patent may illustrate what the service can offer and what things a researcher may need to watch out for. A Brown truss is a type of bridge truss, used in covered bridges. Its inventor, Josiah Brown Jr., of Buffalo, New York, patented it July 7, 1857. cite web|url=http://www.wmta.org/coveredbridges/whites_bridges.html|title=White's Covered Bridge page|work=West Michigan Tourist Association|accessmonthday=December 27|accessyear=2006 ] Google Patents has this patent, but the title is "TBUSS-BEIDGE JO SI AH BROWN"cite web|url=http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT17722|title="TBUSS-BEIDGE JO SI AH BROWN"(sic) page|work=Google Patents search DB|accessmonthday=December 28|accessyear=2006] presumably due to OCR errors. Contrast with the original from the US patent 17,722cite web|url=http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN%2F17722 |title=Patent 17,722|work=US Patent Office Full-Text and Image Database|accessmonthday=December 28|accessyear=2006] which has the correct title. Searching for the inventor, or searching with the terms "Truss" or "Bridge" would fail at present. Google has indicated they are taking steps to correct this. For this reason, and because Google search technology does not necessarily return all patents, only the "most relevant", critics have said that this service is valuable, but not yet sufficient to rely on as a sole source, [cite web|url=http://searchengineland.com/061213-200005.php|title=Google Launches Google Patents, Full-Text US Patent Searching|work=searchengineland.com blog|accessmonthday=December 29|accessyear=2006] and professionals should continue to rely on multiple sources.

See also

* Baidu Patents

References

External links

* [http://www.google.com/patents Google Patents] main entry point to subject service
* [http://www.google.com/googlepatents/about.html about] page for service
* [http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/003311.html story] in PC World magazine blog about things found using Google Patents
* [http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/12/14/google-patent-search-tech-media_cx_rr_1214patents.html forbes.com] story about launch
* [http://www.ipr-helpdesk.org/newsletter/31/html/EN/howToFindAPatent.html IPR-Helpdesk Bulletin] critical overview of this patent search tool