Google Patents

Google Patents
URL http://www.google.com/patents
Type of site search
Registration no
Owner Google
Created by Google
Current status beta

Google Patents is a search engine from Google that indexes patents and patent applications from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which are taken from the original USPTO database (which is in the public domain). All 8 million patents have been put in the database. Optical character recognition (OCR) has been performed on the pages to make them searchable. This searchability includes all US patents and published patent applications. [1]

Contents

History and background

The service was launched on December 14, 2006. Google says it uses "the same technology as that underlying Google Books",[2] allowing scrolling through pages, and zooming in on areas.[3] The images are saveable as PNG files.

Review and criticisms

The indexing is not perfect. Reportedly, as of December 14, 2006, not all IBM patents were locatable, as searching for IBM patents retrieved only 1,197 results on Google Patents, but that IBM received nearly 3,000 patents in 2005 alone.[4]

In terms of response time, the performance of Google Patents is considered to be very good.[5]

See also

References

  1. ^ http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2010/10_22.jsp Official USPTO announcement for teamwork with Google.
  2. ^ "About page". Google Patents site. http://www.google.com/googlepatents/about.html. Retrieved December 29, 2006. 
  3. ^ "Patent announce page". official Google Blog site. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-you-can-search-for-us-patents.html. Retrieved December 29, 2006. 
  4. ^ Rachel Rosmarin. "Digital Media – Google Searches Patents". Forbes.com site. http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/12/14/google-patent-search-tech-media_cx_rr_1214patents.html. Retrieved December 29, 2006. 
  5. ^ European Patent Office, Google launches patent search facility, Patent Information News, Issue 1, 2007, page 2.

External links