Research Guides: Patents: Databases

Key Resources and More Databases

Canadian Patents Database (CIPO)
Canadian patent records, 1869 to present; full-text documents starting with 1920 to present.
Espacenet (European Patent Office)
International patent database containing 110+ million patents from more than 80 national and regional patent offices and over one million non-patent literature references. (Recommended).
Google Patents
Patents from the US, Canada, European Union, China and WIPO.
United States Patent Databases (USPTO)
U.S. patents, 1790 to present and published applications, 2001 to present. Patents prior to 1976 can be retrieved by number, date and classification. TIFF viewer required to view/print patent documents.

Patent Lens is a public patent database indexing 100 million patent documents from 90+ national and regional patent offices. Full-text EP, US and WO documents are available.
Free Patents Online provides fast, easy-to-use access to millions of patents and patent applications and an expanding data collection.

SciFinder This link opens in a new window
Access to chemistry patents and Chemical Abstracts [1907-present]. Use for: chemistry and chemical engineering, biochemistry, biotechnology, electrochemistry, metallurgy and materials science and pharmacology.

PatentScope (WIPO) searches 98 million patent documents including 4.1 million published international patent applications [PCT].