Subject guides: Science: Patents

What is a patent?

This guide brings together some of the best places to find existing patents with a number of useful resources for learning more about patents and the process of obtaining a patent on a new invention. A patent is a right granted for any device, substance, method or process which is new, inventive and useful. It is legally enforceable and gives the owner the exclusive right to commercially exploit the invention for the life of the patent. (Source: IP Australia)

Australian patents

IP Australia is the government agency responsible for granting rights in patents, trade marks and designs in Australia. AusPat is the search system for Australian patents.

Copies of Australian Patents can be purchased by contacting IP Australia.

Open access patent databases

Espacenet
A free database which gives full-text of European, US, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), and Japanese patents. On the homepage, you can search with SmartSearch, Advanced search, or Classification search.
Google Patents
A free database which includes over 120 million patent publications from 100+ patent offices around the world, as well as many more technical documents and books indexed in Google Scholar and Google Books, and documents from the Prior Art Archive.
The Lens
Serves global patent and scholarly knowledge free of charge as a public good to inform science and technology enabled problem solving.
Patent Public Search (USPTO)
Developed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office and provides enhanced access to prior art.

Subscription databases

Dimensions This link opens in a new window
Brings together millions of publications, grants, policy, data and metrics, enabling users to explore connections between them. Data and expertise that span the research lifecycle from Digital Sciences companies ReadCube, Altmetric, Figshare, Symplectic, Digital Science Consultancy and Uber Research included.
EP Patents (Elsevier) This link opens in a new window
Includes US and European patents grants and applications covering a broad range of topics within the scientific, applied science, technical and engineering disciplines. Includes links to full text.
Reaxys This link opens in a new window
Includes the Patent Chemistry database which extracts and indexes chemical information from patent documents and other literature sources.
SciFinder-n This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive and authoritative collection of chemical literature, indexed journal articles and patent records (and other document types), as well as chemical substances and reactions. Includes PatentPak which allows you to search through millions of patents sourced from more than 30 patent offices and instantly locate the chemistry within.

Patents resources

The patents guide
This guide to the patent process is produced by IP Australia.
Monash Innovation Team
The Monash Innovation team manages IP, commercialisation and royalties.
WIPO - World Intellectual Property Organization
Covers various aspects of intellectual property from copyright to patents at the international level.
International Patent Classification (IPC)
'A hierarchical classification system used primarily to classify and search patent documents (patent applications, specifications of granted patents, utility models, etc.) according to the technical fields they contain'.