Patents, Trademarks, & Copyrights

Issued by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) allows one to search over 107 million patent documents including >4.4 million published international patent applications (PCT)

Restricted to US Patents only. New search interface launched 2022.

Covers US Patents newer than 1976.

Provides free access to >130 million patent documents issued by European countries.

SciFinder provides instant access to the world's largest curated collection of information on disclosed chemistry and related research produced by CAS. All users MUST register using a UCI email account to use this resource and should review this announcement -

On July 31,2022 the SciFinder “classic” interface will be retired for the University of California system. Going forward, we will only have access to SciFinder-n (or SciFindern, https://scifinder-n.cas.org).
Registered SciFinder users should expect to see several emails between now and the end of July reminding you of the change.
If you are already using SciFinder-n, there’s nothing you need to do.
If you are still using SciFinder “classic,” I do encourage you to begin using SciFinder-n. It’s the same username and password for both systems. If you have the old URL bookmarked, it will redirect to SciFinder-n after July 31.
To migrate your saved searches and alerts, login to SciFinder-n, go to Saved and Alerts, then Migrate Alerts & Saved Results. There is more information about migration exceptions within the SciFinder-n help menu (link).

CAS has created some good training videos on SciFinder-n (https://www.cas.org/support/training/scifinder-n). There are also some upcoming webinars, and the Chemistry Librarian can offer training to classes, research groups, and individuals.

The USPTO launched a major initiative aimed at expanding invention, innovation and entrepreneurship in the US. The new National Council for Expanding American Innovation will help guide the USPTO in developing a comprehensive national strategy to build a more diverse and inclusive innovation ecosystem.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will issue the 10 millionth utility patent on Tuesday, June 19, 2018. This is a historic milestone for the agency and for inventors in the United States. Use the hashtag #10MillionPatents to join the celebration.

Links patents to scholarship in a free database that exposes 100M+ patents from 95 jurisdictions in a PatSearch & PatCite environment linking to 188M+ scholarly outputs demonstrating the value of patents in research, scholarship & innovation.

UCI's subscription to Scopus allows searching over 39M patent records from 5 global patent offices:
1. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
2. European Patent Office (EPO)
3. US Patent Office (USPTO)
4. Japanese Patent Office ( JPO)
5. UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO.GOV.UK)

The best way to search for patents is by creating a thorough document search, and then selecting ‘View xxxx Patent Results’ on the top right side of the search results screen.

now includes the Canadian national collection from ~1920 forward. No PDFs yet, it appears, but full text (based on OCR) is available for some patents. A few pre-1970s patents have IPC codes, so keyword searching may be required for some types of searches. This gives researchers another option for searching Canadian patents from the early 20th century forward.

Other national collections to be added in the next few months include the Eurasian Patent Office, Germany, and UK.

Article in the NY Times on Feb 9, 2012

"a nice summary of the recent changes in U.S. patent law in the Jan 2012 issue of Physics Today, their relevance to academic scientists & engineers. The American Invents Act moves the U.S. from a first-to-invent system to a (modified) first-to-file system. Under the pure first-to-file system used by most countries, publication of an idea or invention prior to filing a patent application will prevent an inventor from obtaining a patent. The AIA retains a one-year grace period for publications

Legislative history and recent commentaries about impact of new law.

On Sept 16, 2011, President Obama signed the first changes in Patent Law in years. Read the discussion about this in Wired.com

Celebrating its 22nd Anniversary on April 26, 2022

The Official Gazette - Trademarks is being made available in electronic form (.PDF format) for the most recent fifty-two issues. The electronic version of the Trademark Official Gazette does not contain Patent and Trademark Office Notices...