Google’s US patent search feature

Using the zippy Google Patent Search, you can now search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus in order to find patents that interest you.

For those who don’t already know it, patents issued in the United States are public domain government information and images of the entire database of US patents are readily available online via the USPTO website.

As such, it was rather easy for Google to tap into this huge intelligence concentrator, for the enjoyment of patent searchers everywhere and yes, the patent pages are hosted by Google, directly.

To get you started in your US patent exploration, here are a few popular search suggestions.

By patent details:

• Patent Number: patent:1247412
• Inventor: ininventor:edison
• Assignee: inassignee:fairchild

By classification (see the USPTO’s Patent Classification resources):

• Current US Classification: uspclass:”99/385″
• International Classification: intlpclass:”A63B 6308″

Can you guess which patents these drawings refer to?

It’s pretty interesting to browse all those older patents filed in the early 1800s so just be curious and fire up a search of your own!

Needless to say, the extensive array of patent information readily available should satisfy most people, especially since Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO, from patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006 (approximately 7 million patents).

It should be noted though that patent applications, international patents and US patents issued over the last few months are available… yet. Google does intend to expand the patent search coverage, in the future.

Patent results are ranked according to their relevance to a given search query, in a similar fashion as the now ubiquitous Google Web Search.

Tags: google, patent search, us patents, intelligence