I need to perform a search for patents that are similar to work we are doing. I have tried certain keywords, which resulted in several patents. However, most of these are not relevant. The problem is that going through these patents is taking way too long. What is the best way to skim through these patents in search of the relevant information? I've realized it is very different to doing a literature search for research articles.

Thanks.

Luis

I walking out the door right now. When I get a chance later today to sit back down to the computer, I will give you some suggestions and pointers.

Brian C. Gray
Head of Reference
Librarian - Engineering, Math, & Statistics
Kelvin Smith Library (http://library.case.edu)
Personal Blog: http://blog.case.edu/bcg8/

Patents are very tough to search for. I have put together a research guide of various resources that may help. I recommend usually that people search from the European patent search site because it works faster (different time zone) and the results include U.S. and other countries.

Patent searching is available in some of the library databases. If you go to our Research Databases list, click on "See complete list of databases A-Z", and finally select "patent" as the "Choose A Content Type".

If the patents you are searching for exist prior to 1976, word searching does not work. You need to know the exact patent number of the classification category. If you can find one patent that is close to what you are looking for, you can browse all patents in that classification category to see similar patents. This is my opinion works fairly well.

There is a new player in patent searching that is changing how things are done for U.S. patents. You may want to try Google's patent search. There is one catch, it only brings the top 500 patents back. To get around that restriction, go to Advanced Search and search for a few years at a time.

If some of these tricks do not work for you, I do teach a CaseLearns class on patent searching and/or I can do a similar session for a class or lab group. You can also email me your search criteria and I can give it a try for you.

Brian C. Gray
Head of Reference
Librarian - Engineering, Math, & Statistics
Kelvin Smith Library (http://library.case.edu)
Personal Blog: http://blog.case.edu/bcg8/

Brian, thank you for your help. I'll give your suggestions a try.

-Luis