This page last updated on January 16, 2000

This page includes information about Patents in the US.  It is intended to help students (and prospective inventors) find out basic infomation about existing patents.

The number of patents granted annually has increased significantly, in response to rapid developments in several areas.  From the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office:

Patents are identified by The Manual of Classification and are divided into categories in a class/subclass system.  These are designated 43/42.06 implying Class 43 and Subclass 42.06.

For a patent search, you need to find the class/subclass that represents the types of items you are trying to locate.  Once you find the correct category, you can list all patents in that group that may be applicable to the item that you are trying to patent.  

The University of Texas-Austin has an excellent tutorial on locating the appropriate class/subclass.  Contact them at:

www.lib.utexas.edu/Libs/ENG/PTUT/ptut.html

Resources of patents are located at Patent & Trademark Depository Libraries (PTDL).  Their mission is to provide the public with information about existing patents.  You can also obtain information online (for patents since 1976) from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  There complete search site is at:

www.patents.uspto.gov/access/search-adv.html
this site is a little buggy - need to verify URL

or IBM maintains another site at:

www.womplex.patents.ibm.com
another buggy one - confirm URL

These sites do not contain complete patent descriptions, instead they are abstracts.  Complete documents must be ordered from a PTDL ot the USPTO.

The information on this webpage is from an article by Julia Crawford in the February 1999 issue of Prism magazine from ASEE.  See her article for a much clearer description of the patent search process.  I'm thankful for her work in putting the article together.