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Patents

Intellectual property

  • IP Australia
    Intellectual property organisations in Australia and overseas

Patent Databases

  • Espacenet (Great Britain mirror site) - search and view the full text of patents - includes UK patents, patents from the European Patent Office and individual European patenting authorities,World patents,and US Patent Office. Also includes Australian patents.
  • US Patent Full Text Database
    Full text of US patents from 1976, full page images from 1790 (images are in .tiff format).
  • Google Patents searches USPTO database from 1790's to last few months - doesn't cover patent applications or foreign patents or recently issued patents.
  • Canadian Patent Office
    Search 75 years of patent descriptions and images.
  • Japanese Patent Office
    includes searching  patents and trademarks databases 
  • Industrial Property Digital Library

Patent Classifications

Citing a patent in a bibliography or reference list

The minimum data required for an acceptable citation are the inventor's name(s), year of patent issue, title of patent, country of issue, patent number (include additional dating information, if available, at the end)

For example:  

Bernson, SW 1980, Conversion of Methane. U.S Patent 4,199,533. April 22

De Wied, A 1957, Improvements in the packing of sausage casings, GB 769446.

Copyright

See also: Copyright arrangements at Swinburne

Author: Fiona O'Donnell (fodonnell@swin.edu.au)