Prior Art Search Resources

Patent Resources

Patexia Patent Database
Over 4 million US patents (from 1976 to present)
More than 3 million US patent applications (from 2001 to present)

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
The USPTO has a wealth of information about patents publicly available on their site. You can learn more about the patent process and patent rules, and search for information about specific patents with the USPTO’s Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. The USPTO also publishes templates for the searches they use when considering patents, organized by subject matter.
The USPTO also publishes educational materials, like this webinar on conducting a patent search. http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/ptdl/CBT/

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
WIPO is a special agency of the United Nations that manages international intellectual property issues. They offer a wealth of information and an international patent search tool, as well as a listing of national patent offices.

European Patent Office (EPO)
EPO offers information about patents in Europe, including Espacenet, a searchable database of  more than 70 million patent documents worldwide, from 1836 to today.

Patent Search Guides

University of Maine Raymond H. Folger Library
Patent Search Resource List

Arizona State University
A Short Course on Patent Reference

 

Non-patent Literature Resources

Scholarly Databases

Google Scholar
Provides a search of scholarly literature across many disciplines and sources, including theses, books, abstracts and articles.

STN
An online database service that provides global access to published research, journal literature, patents, structures, sequences, properties and other data.

Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library
Full text of every article ever published by ACM and bibliographic citations from major publishers in computing.

SciVerse SCOPUS
Abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature

Engineering Village
Engineering-related research tool

JSTOR
Academic Journals Database

CiteSeerx
An evolving scientific literature digital library and search engine that focuses primarily on the literature in computer and information science.

ingentaconnect
Scholarly research database

J-Gate
A searchable database of e-journals

SpringerLink
Database of materials published by Springer, an academic publisher

MatWeb
Searchable database of material properties

ChemSpider
A free chemical structure database providing fast text and structure search access to over 26 million structures from hundreds of data sources.
 

IP-Related Resources

MARPAT
The structure-searchable database of generic, hypothetical substances found in patent claims and disclosures.

Research Disclosure
A defensive publishing service
 

Periodicals and Other Sources

United States Library of Congress
Searchable database of Library of Congress holdings, as well as many other US libraries

ProQuest
Provides archives of sources such as newspapers, periodicals, dissertations, and aggregated databases of many types

BusinessWire
Corporate Press Releases

PR Newswire
Corporate Press Releases
 

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