Before you set out to patent any invention, you should conduct or have some one else conduct a thorough patent search. There are two main reasons for this. First, you will be in a better position to draft your application if you have a thorough knowledge of the prior art in your field. Second, if your search turns up your own invention, you will want to rethink what it is that you exactly want to try to get a patent on or perhaps even forgoe paying the expense of trying to obtain a patent. This section of Ypatent contains helpful links for conducting your patent search.

General Search Engines:

Google yahoo msn dogpile (searches multiple search engines) Searchenginewatch (lists other search engines) clearinghouse (excellent site for search engines by subject) Educationindex (listing of best search engines by subject)

Literature Search Databases

Google Books (search for through thousands of books)  Google Scholar (use to find scholarly references) Microsoft Acadmic (allows search by author, conference, journal, organization, year, visualization) IP.com (an excellent resource to search literature that may invalid patents)   Science.gov (searches over 60 databases and ofer 2200 selected websites from 15 federal agencies)  Science Direct (search books, journal articles) . IEEE xplore  (more mechnical electrical)  O’Reilly Media, Inc. (formerly Safari)   Science Direct 

Bibliographic information (correct dates, sites, etc; also remember to right click on pdf which can show creation dates and check Amazon): CAS Source Index (CASSI) Search Tool    (provides accurate bibliographic information)   WorldCat (find items in libaries near you)

Videos:  IET.tv (can browse videos by technology)

Conversions/Numbers

Asknumbers (great tool for finding units having similar values).

Search the Deep Web

Deeperweb (search into the deep web)  Dogpile   Yippy

Specialized Prior Art Databases:

Proteins/synonyms:  Gene Card (searches genes/proteins of interest)  IHOP (semilar to Gene Card. Very good search for proteins and the like to obtain synonyms)  Brenda  (enzyme database)

Clinical Trials:  FDA (good for searching clinical trial information and product approval)

FDA Drug & labels: FDA Label Search  Daily Med  Drugs@FDA

Chemical Searching:  PubChem Project  (from NIH) .  STNext (searches chemical structures; paid site)

Epitope analysis/database:  Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource

Translations:   SIPO Machine Translations (chinese to English).  Advanced Insutrial Property network

Paid (Professional) Search Companies:  Cardinal IP  Patent & Trademark SVC   Onsite Patent Services  Express Search   CPA Global Inc  Patent Hawk

Trademark Searching:  Thomson Reuters (paid service but very power search engine for trademarks) For the specific trademark searching page of see Trademarks Thomson Reuters

File Wrappers/Prosecution History:

Patent File Wrapper (easy way to bring up docuemnt/prosecution history of US Patent Applications