Thursday, August 7, 2014

Patent Tip: Comparing Google Patents to USPTO

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.” -- Winston Churchill (British Orator, Author and Prime Minister during World War II. 1874-1965)

Google® Patents is quick and easy.  HOWEVER, there is a time lag between USPTO – U.S. Patents & Trademarks Office - and Google® Patents.  If absolute currency is important to you, use USPTO.

Commercial vendors of patent information like Derwent source their patents from USPTO and other national patent agencies.  USPTO is free to the public.  Derwent charges money.  HOWEVER, Derwent adds value to the USPTO data by correcting misspellings, OCR errors and other typos.  If you are conducting a comprehensive search before filing a patent, the added value is worth the added expense.

Read these and other patent searching tips in a very useful Patent Searching cheat sheet (http://library.caltech.edu/learning/classhandouts/PatentSearching.pdf) produced by Caltech Library. It is short, to the point, and absolutely free.

No comments:

Post a Comment