Patents are exclusive rights granted by national and international agencies that confirms an exclusive right to a novel device, process or product for a specified period of time. Patents as documents prevent others from making, using or selling your invention in any manner.
Patents are key scholarly resources. Some databases cover international patents, scholarly content and related information. Key databases provide links to full-text patent documents when appropriate.
Patents searching is usually aided by unique patent numbers. Searching for patents by idea, design, utility, process is more difficult and in commercial settings is done by experts with legal training.
A select list of the most highly used patent databases are listed below
The most comprehensive and robust international patent citation database containing over 100 million patent documents from more than 100 countries including European Patent Office, Canada and the United States.
