What are the Patent Search Databases?

Patent search Databases

Patent Search Databases or Patent databases are the collections of patents/applications usually maintained by respective national patent offices, for example, USPTO (the United States Patent and Trademark Office), IPO (Indian Patent Office), JPO (Japanese Patent Office), etc. Such databases are usually available free of cost, however, there are a number of paid databases also such as Delphion, Micropat, etc., which have a collection of patents and applications from several countries and have advanced search options.

The patent databases can be classified mainly into three types:

a) Government based patent databases

b) Free patent databases

c) Paid patent databases

a) Government based patent databases

Government based patent databases are the databases that belong to the Intellectual Property Office of the respective country. Such databases are a primary source of patent-related information and contain patents/applications which have been published or granted by the Intellectual Property Office of the respective country. For example, USPTO covers the patents/applications published by the US patent office.

Indian Patent Office is in a process of creating an online database containing granted patents3 and patent applications published upon expiry of 18 months.

b) Free patent databases

There are several free patent databases available to search for the patent/applications.

c) Paid patent databases

The paid databases have information on patents/applications from various countries and such databases are usually accompanied by additional features to facilitate a better patent search.