LibGuides: CM3410 Technical Communication for Chemical Engineers: Patent Searching

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Patent Resources

Seven Step Strategy for Patents searching - USPTO
Follow these steps to perform a patent search on the US Patent & Trademark Office website.
Anatomy of a U.S. Patent Document
This short document will help you discover what sort of information can be found in a patent.
USPTO Classes by Title
Start here to browse the USPTO list of classes. "Distillation Apparatuses" may be a good place to start.
Index to the United States Patent Classification (USPC) System
Patent Resources Guide
Tutorials, information and more. Created by Purdue Engineering Librarian, Charlotte Erdmann.

Patent Search Databases

USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) Search
Issued patents are available from 1789-present and published applications are available since March 2001. Issued patents and applications are in separate databases.
Espacenet
European Patent Office. The Espacenet system offers searchable bibliographic data for over 70 million patent documents from over 90 countries
Google Patents
This source makes available issued patents and published applications in PDF format
Patent Lens
Easy to search. Searches US patents applications back to 2001, granted patents from 1976. Also includes some international patents.
FreePatentsOnline
This source makes available issued patents and published applications in PDF format