Patents

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Need the full-text for a patent?

Google patent search: familiar interface; full-text search back to US patent #1; includes US, EP and WIPO patents BUT OCR errors may cause incomplete results; can be slow to update most recent patents.

USPTO Patent Office search: includes the most current US patents; has some good searching tools, such as patent class codes; BUT full-text only since 1976; not as user friendly as Google.

Espacenet offers free access to more than 80 million patent documents worldwide, most of them patent applications rather than granted patents, from 1836 to today.

For really advanced help you can also contact one of the three US Patent and Trademark Resource Centers in the Bay area. San Francisco, San Jose, Sunnyvale.

Key databases

"Using information from 41 patent-issuing authorities, DII facilitates rapid, precise patent searching, letting you conduct patent and citation searches of inventions in chemical, electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. Descriptive titles and indexing have been added. Find “equivalent” patents published in a language you can read. Also contains both citing and cited patents and literature references, allowing users to move both forward and backward in time from a selected patent. Updated weekly, covers 1963-present." (Structure Searching)

"Espacenet's worldwide database enables you to search for information about published patent applications from over 90 different countries and regions. Espacenet offers free access to more than 80 million patent documents worldwide--most of them patent applications rather than granted patents--from 1836 to today. Patent applications normally represent the first publication of a new idea, appearing ahead of journal articles and before new products reach the market. It is possible to print and download full-text documents."

Funded initially by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Lens now covers nearly 90 jurisdictions worldwide with over 80 million patent documents, serving INPADOC, EPO, USPTO, and WO, with many more coming. Explore global patent families; full-text searching of major jurisdictions (US, EP, WO); free PDFs; multilingual searching (English, Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Korean, Japanese, Russian); collect, share, comment, annotate; faceted exploration; graphical analysis; embed analysis in your site; explore over 120 million DNA and 10 million protein sequences in patents; marked up citations (links to references and open access documents); current legal status; and examine and compare biological holdings using the PatSeq Explorer

Patent news

Alltop - Top Patent News

EPO President's Blog and EPO news

USPTO Director’s Forum Blog

VentureBeat: Tech news that matters

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WIPO Magazine

WIPO press releases

Keeping lab records

Data management services @ Stanford

Selected links

"This chapter covers some of the basics: the importance of day-to-day record keeping and good practice for laboratory notebooks, what to consider when developing a system to track and store information, and finding the right data management system for you." Chapter 8 IN Making the Right Moves: A Practical Guide to Scientific Management for Postdocs and New Faculty, 2nd edition, 2006. By Buroughs Wellcome Fund and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Listed on the Resources for the Development of Early-Career Scientists page at HHMI.

Selected books

About patents

What is a patent?

"A patent is an intellectual property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a limited time [usually 20 years] in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted.

There are three types of patents.

Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.
Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture.
Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant."

Source: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office > Patents

Why search for patents?

Anatomy of a patent & patent number guide

General information about patents

The IP5 Offices have compiled a quick reference guide to the most important features of the patent systems in the IP5 regions. The five IP offices (IP5) is the name given to a forum of the five largest intellectual property offices in the world that was set up to improve the efficiency of the examination process for patents worldwide. The members of IP5 are: the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Read more about IP5 cooperation.

Key documents for chemists

Patent families

Patent glossaries and terminologies

Featured terminology

WIPO Pearl: Find over 90,000 technical terms in 10 languages validated by experts in this free terminology database. Integrated into PATENTSCOPE which has over 43 million international and national patent documents. Depending on your browser settings, the video opens in a new tab or window. By World Intellectual Property Organization.

The Glossary Pilot Program has been extended for six months to June 2, 2015 or until the USPTO accepts 200 grantable petitions under the pilot program, whichever occurs first. In June 2013, the White House issued a series of Executive Actions concerning high-tech patent issues. Executive Action No. 2 concerned functional claiming, specifically, (i) improving functional claim clarity; and (ii) possible glossary usage in patent specifications. The White House assigned Executive Action No. 2 to the USPTO, stating: “The AIA made important improvements to the examination process and overall patent quality, but stakeholders remain concerned about patents with overly broad claims—particularly in the context of software. The PTO will provide new targeted training to its examiners on scrutiny of functional claims and will, over the next six months develop strategies to improve claim clarity, such as by use of glossaries in patent specifications to assist examiners in the software field.”

WIPO’s multilingual terminology portal gives access to scientific and technical terms derived from patent documents. It helps promote accurate and consistent use of terms across different languages, and makes it easier to search and share scientific and technical knowledge. Developed by language experts and terminologists at WIPO, the database currently contains 14,951 concepts and 91,152 terms. WIPO Pearl has been integrated with PATENTSCOPE so you can search the entire PATENTSCOPE corpus for terms and their equivalents in other languages. Learn more by viewing the WIPO Pearl video or User Guide.

Patent law history

Selected books on patents in the Stanford Libraries

Written by an individual with experience as both a chemist and a patent attorney, The Chemist's Companion Guide to Patent Law covers everything the student or working chemist needs to know about patentability, explaining important concepts of patent law (such as novelty, non-obviousness, and freedom-to-operate) in easy-to-understand terms. Through abundant examples from case law as well as real-world situations with which a researcher might be faced, this book provides readers with a better understanding of how to put that knowledge into practice.

Bridges the gap between the realistic needs and questions of scientists and engineers and the legal skills of professionals in the patent field at a level accessible to those with no legal training. This book was written for inventors in lay terms that they can relate to or easily follow. It lays out the new features of patent law introduced by the America Invents Act of 2012 and explains the differences between the first-to-invent and first-to-file rules and why the two rules will coexist. It also focuses on the growth of new technologies in industry versus the laws protecting them.

Although chemists, physicists, biologists, polymer scientists, and engineers in industry are involved in potentially patentable work, they are often under-prepared for this all-important field. This book provides a clear, jargon-free, and comprehensive overview of the patenting process tailored specifically to the needs of scientists and engineers, including: requirements for a patentable invention, how to invent, new laws created by President Obama's 2011 America Invents Act, the process of applying for and obtaining a patent in the U.S. and in foreign countries, and commercializing inventions and the importance of innovation. Based on lecture notes refined over twenty-five years at The University of Akron, How to Invent and Protect Your Invention contains practical advice, colorful examples, and a wealth of personal experience from the authors.

This Manual is published to provide U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent examiners, applicants, attorneys, agents, and representatives of applicants with a reference work on the practices and procedures relative to the prosecution of patent applications before the USPTO. It contains instructions to examiners, as well as other material in the nature of information and interpretation, and outlines the current procedures which the examiners are required or authorized to follow in appropriate cases in the normal examination of a patent application.

Patent Strategy introduces researchers to patent applications and patent portfolios. With minimum use of ‘legal jargon’ it provides the technical professional with the assistance and advice they require to understand the legal complexities that they may encounter before and during a patent application. This updated edition of the best selling book has been expanded to keep pace with modern day movements and addresses the global issue surrounding intellectual property. Including new information on areas such as software and biotechnology it shows the techniques that can be used by individuals and academic inventors to protect their work and is the ideal reference source.

The chemicals, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology industries worldwide rely upon being able to patent inventions in order to protect investment in research and development, and to reap commercial rewards. An increasingly globalized sector requires a global perspective, and this book guides the reader through the legal and procedural complexities of the British, European, Japanese and US patent systems. This book provides the reader with a complete description of the techniques and industry know-how that underlie successful patent practice and portfolio management and will be invaluable to all patent agents and practitioners working in the area of patent law. With its lucid and accessible presentation and practical approach, this book will also be welcomed by scientists, researchers and managers without a legal background.

"Gives a description of the U.S. patent system and a tutorial on how to read and understand patents, how to use patents as a source of information, how to recognize that an invention has been made, and how to work with attorneys or agents in seeeking patent protection for inventions. Also gives the technical person enough familiarity with the special terminology of patents to be able to deal comfortably with patent attorneys, agents, and technical liaison personnel. Answers the questions not only of practicing chemists and chemical engineers, but also people in other fields who need to understand the patent system."

A practical handbook designed to empower inventors like you to write your own patent application drafts in conjunction with an attorney,this book presents a brand new methodology for success. Based on a short course author Francis J. Waller gives for the American Chemical Society, the book teaches you how to structure a literature search, to educate the patent examiner on your work, to prepare an application that can be easily duplicated, and to understand what goes on behind the scenes during the patent examiner's rejection process. Providing essential insights, invaluable strategies, and applicable, real-world examples designed to maximize the chances that a patent will be accepted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, Writing Chemistry Patents and Intellectual Property is the book you need if you want to keep your work protected.

Latest books in the SU Libs on patents

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America Invents Act primer

Sarah Hasford. 2017
America Invents Act primer

Sarah Hasford. 2017
Commerce, Justice, science, and related agencies appropriations for 2018 : hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fifteenth Congress, first session

Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies. 2017
Comparative property law : global perspectives

edited by Michele Graziadei, Lionel Smith. 2017
Current challenges in patent information retrieval

Mihai Lupu, Katja Mayer, Noriko Kando, Anthony J. Trippe, editors. 2017

Patent classification

Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC)

Patent classification schemes

Applicants for national or international IP protection are required to determine whether their creation is new or owned/claimed by someone else. To determine this, huge amounts of information must be searched. International classifications facilitate such searches by organizing information concerning inventions, trademarks and industrial designs into indexed, manageable structures for easy retrieval.

For guidance on how to perform a preliminary patent search using patent classification codes, please see the Seven Step Strategy that was developed by the Patent and Trademark Resource Center. For more details, please see the USPTO > Patents > Patent Classification page.

The use of patent classification in searching U.S. patents and published applications usually results in a more comprehensive search than one solely done by keyword (text) searching. Since keyword searches are challenging with the often technical and legal language of patents, they serve best to supplement a patent classification search.

Browse by Class Numbers and Titles
Browse alphabetical index of subjects to find specific classes and subclasses of the classification system

The USPTO is currently transitioning from the over 100 year old U.S. Patent Classification system to a new classification system jointly developed with the European Patent Office called Cooperative Patent Classification. Beginning in 2015, the USPTO will only use Cooperative Patent Classification for classifying utility patent documents, but will continue to use U.S. Patent Classification for design and plant patents.

Patent databases

International patent databases

"Using information from 41 patent-issuing authorities, DII facilitates rapid, precise patent searching, letting you conduct patent and citation searches of inventions in chemical, electrical, electronic, and mechanical engineering. Descriptive titles and indexing have been added. Find “equivalent” patents published in a language you can read. Also contains both citing and cited patents and literature references, allowing users to move both forward and backward in time from a selected patent. Updated weekly, covers 1963-present." (Structure Searching)

Designview is an online consultation tool allowing any Internet user to search, free of charge, designs of all participating offices, including OHIM (Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market of the European Union), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and National Offices. It is multilingual and easy-to-use tool, and gives access to design applications and registrations provided by the participating offices though a single and unique platform. Each office owns the content it makes available and is responsible for its daily update.

"Espacenet's worldwide database enables you to search for information about published patent applications from over 90 different countries and regions. Espacenet offers free access to more than 80 million patent documents worldwide--most of them patent applications rather than granted patents--from 1836 to today. Patent applications normally represent the first publication of a new idea, appearing ahead of journal articles and before new products reach the market. It is possible to print and download full-text documents."

Google Patents covers the entire collection of granted patents and published patent applications from the USPTO (United States), the EPO (Europe), the DPMA (Germany), the CIPO (Canada), the SIPO (China) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). US patent documents date back to 1790, EPO and WIPO to 1978. Each patent search includes the patent summary, claims, drawings, citations, and referenced by notes. Offers full-text searching, relevancy ranked sorting of search results, and access to PDFs of original documents. Checking the "include non-patent literature" box allows your search to also find books, articles and reports with the matching CPC codes for your searched topic from Google Scholar.

Funded initially by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The Lens now covers nearly 90 jurisdictions worldwide with over 80 million patent documents, serving INPADOC, EPO, USPTO, and WO, with many more coming. Explore global patent families; full-text searching of major jurisdictions (US, EP, WO); free PDFs; multilingual searching (English, Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Korean, Japanese, Russian); collect, share, comment, annotate; faceted exploration; graphical analysis; embed analysis in your site; explore over 120 million DNA and 10 million protein sequences in patents; marked up citations (links to references and open access documents); current legal status; and examine and compare biological holdings using the PatSeq Explorer

USPTO Global Dossier

USPTO Global Dossier allows users to track the status of patents in the world’s five largest patent offices: the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the European Patent Office, the Korean Intellectual Property Office, China’s State Intellectual Property Office and the Japan Patent Office. As users search for the status of an invention's applications, the Dossier Access portal queries foreign patent office databases in real time. It also offers translations of non-English applications.

U.S. patent databases

Canadian patent database

The Canadian Patent Database contains over 2.2 million patent documents from 1869 to the present. This database is updated regularly with newly granted patents and applications opened to public inspection. Searches are performed against the bibliographic and text data fields only, and a "hit list" of matching patents is returned. Images are not searchable but can be viewed for any particular patent that has been returned in a hit list. The text of the abstracts and claims is not available for patents that were granted prior to August 15, 1978. These patents can only be searched by their patent number, titles, owner, inventor, or classification. Note about completeness of the Date Fields: The issue date is searchable from 1869 to the last updated date. The filing date is not available for patents registered prior to August 15, 1978. The priority date and the national entry date are not available for patents registered prior to October 1, 1989.

Japanese patent database

Search in English or Japanese.

Japan Platform for Patent Information (J-PlatPat) offers the public access to IP Gazettes of the JPO free of charge through the Internet. Offers searches for Patent & utility model number, FI/F-term, PAJ, Patent map guidance, design number, design classification, and Japanese trademarks.

J-PlatPat enables users to access to almost all official gazettes which have been issued by Japan Patent Office. Keyword search in English is available in the Patent Abstracts of Japan which abstracts of published patent applications that have been issued after 1976.)
J-PlatPat enables users to search official gazettes which have been issued since 1885 by patent classification (FI or F-term). What’s FI ? FI is a classification which is given by JPO to make prior art searches more efficient. The IPC is subdivided or expanded into the FI. What’s F-term ? F-term is the technical term made from multiple viewpoints for computerized retrieval of the patent documents, which is given to the patent documents by JPO.
For further information on FI or F-term, you can use PMGS (Patent Map Guidance System). By using “keyword search”, you can reach to suitable FI or F-term.
J-PlatPat enables users to access to English version (machine translation) of patent, utility model gazette which has been issued since 1993 and design official gazette which has been issued since 2000.

People's Republic of China patent database

As a result of cooperative effort between the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People's Republic of China, Chinese patent documentation is now available for search and retrieval from the USPTO website via the Global Patent Search Network. This tool will enable the user to search Chinese patent documents in the English or Chinese language. The data available include fulltext Chinese patents and machine translations. Also available are full document images of Chinese patents which are considered the authoritative Chinese patent document. Users can search documents including published applications, granted patents and utility models from 1985 to 2012. This collection will be periodically updated to include additional years of coverage.

Subject databases

Engineering Village is an information discovery platform that includes access to two databases at Stanford. Compendex (Computerized Engineering Index) is the most comprehensive bibliographic database of scientific and technical engineering research available, covering all engineering disciplines. It includes millions of bibliographic citations and abstracts from thousands of engineering journals and conference proceedings. When combined with the Engineering Index Backfile (1884-1969), Compendex covers well over 120 years of core engineering literature.

Version 3.8 features 32 new APIs and a total of 35,358 structures, 11,289 reactions and 2,606 active pharmaceutical ingredients. Essential for research and process chemists, it includes the full synthetic route for the industrial manufacture of each drug elucidated from the patent literature; unique source of reactions that perform on an industrial scale; readily available overview of the pharmaceutical industry from a synthetic chemist’s perspective; and functionality affords insights into a therapeutic area and chemically related substances. Essential information for product managers, it includes patent information including approval date and expiration; determine market size & competition for an API – essential for development of new and generic pharmaceuticals; source of markets for synthesis intermediates; comprehensive coverage of older APIs and substances approved world-wide; and merger and acquisition tracking ensures that vendor information is up-to-date in a rapidly changing industry. (Structure Searching)

SciFinder is the most comprehensive database for coverage of chemistry & chemical engineering. It has the world's largest collection of organic and inorganic substance information. The web version of SciFinder provides integrated access to CAPlus, CAS Registry, CASREACT, CHEMLIST, and CHEMCATS which are produced by Chemical Abstracts Service, and to MEDLINE which is produced by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Sources covered in SciFinder include 10,000 journals, patents from 63 patent authorities, book chapters, conference proceedings, dissertations, evaluated reference works, technical reports, as well as book reviews and biographical information. Also includes access to MethodsNow, a curated collection of methods in analytical and synthetic chemistry. (Structure and Reaction Searching)

Patent offices

Silicon Valley Office

Permanent Silicon Valley Office will open in San Jose City Hall in early 2015

The San Jose City Hall will be home to the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) Silicon Valley office in mid-2015 after renovations and technical infrastructure updates are completed to accommodate USPTO business. This landmark building, built in 2005, reflects the city's stature in the valley and stands as a symbol of the area's cultural roots and technological savvy. The Silicon Valley, known as one of the most prodigious and innovative entrepreneurial communities in the country, was selected as our west coast presence to assist the USPTO in fostering and protecting innovation.

Selected patent offices and organizations

Cooperative efforts

The five IP offices (IP5) is the name given to a forum of the five largest intellectual property offices in the world that was set up to improve the efficiency of the examination process for patents worldwide. The members of IP5 are:

The IP5 Offices have compiled a quick reference guide to the most important features of the patent systems in the IP5 regions. View the IP5 patent system overview (PDF, 157 KB)

The TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement is Annex 1C of the Marrakesh Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization, signed in Marrakesh, Morocco on 15 April 1994. The TRIPS Agreement, which came into effect on 1 January 1995, is to date the most comprehensive multilateral agreement on intellectual property. The areas of intellectual property that it covers are: copyright and related rights (i.e. the rights of performers, producers of sound recordings and broadcasting organizations); trademarks including service marks; geographical indications including appellations of origin; industrial designs; patents including the protection of new varieties of plants; the layout-designs of integrated circuits; and undisclosed information including trade secrets and test data. The TRIPS Agreement is administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (see full-text of the TRIPS Agreement and a list of members).

The World Health Organization (WHO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) are strengthening their cooperation and practical coordination on issues around public health, intellectual property and trade. The WHO Global Strategy and Plan of Action on Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (GSPOA), the WIPO Development Agenda and the WTO Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health provide the broader context for an informal and practical trilateral cooperation at the working level.

WIPO works in close cooperation with governments, with intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, and with multiple public and private sector stakeholders worldwide to help them realize the benefits of the international IP system for society. WIPO cooperation activities take many forms, including:

Assisting individual countries and regions to use IP for economic development
Coordinating with IP offices to develop technical infrastructure to share work, data and knowledge
Cooperating with member states to build respect for IP
Building multi-stakeholder partnership platforms to address global challenges.

Two of the multi-stakeholder partnership efforts are:

WIPO Green is an interactive marketplace that promotes innovation and diffusion of green technologies by connecting technology and service providers with those seeking innovative solutions. It supports global efforts to address climate change through the skills and technologies available via its network and online database.
WIPO Re:Search is a consortium through which public and private sector organizations around the world share valuable intellectual property and expertise with the global health research community. The aim is to promote the development of new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics in the fight against neglected tropical diseases, malaria, and tuberculosis.

Patent searching

Library tutorials and videos

Database supplier tutorials and support

CAS (Chemical Abstracts Service) covers patents from around the world. Patent records from nine major patent offices worldwide that meet CAS selection criteria are available online in CAplusSM (Explore References part of SciFinder) within two days of the patent's publication, and fully indexed by CAS scientists within 27 days from the date of issue. Patents are selected from over 35,000 International Patent Classification (IPC) codes and 99 U.S. National Patent Classification Codes. SciFinder training materials (recorded WebEx presentations):

Patent Coverage and Patent Information in SciFinder (7 minutes)
How Can a Markush Structure Search Help You In Your Research? (8 minutes)
Patent Family Information and How It Can Aid Your Research (10 minutes)
Finding Competitive Intelligence Information in SciFinder (6 minutes)

WIPO Guides

Below are selected patent publications from the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Books for patent searchers

"While it is not difficult to find data in many cases, what advice can you get on the quality of the data retrieved? Chemical Information for Chemists could help with this problem and more. This book is a chemical information book aimed specifically at practicing chemists. Written and edited by experts in the field, it is ideal for chemists who lack a chemical information professional able to teach basic and intermediate techniques in retrieving and evaluating information using the unique entry points of the chemical literature, including structure, formula, substructure, and sequence. Aimed at students on undergraduate and graduate courses, it could also be a useful guide to new information specialists who are facing the challenging diversity of chemical literature." (publisher's description)

Resources for advanced users

Patents form an important knowledge resource –much technical information represented in patents is not represented in scientific literature – and at the same time they are important, and economically highly relevant, legal documents. Between 1998 and 2008, the number of patent applications filed yearly worldwide grew by more than 50 percent.This book offers a comprehensive overview on the quickly growing domain of patent retrieval. Jointly written by members of the information retrieval and patent information communities, Combines scientific rigorous results with industrial application requirements.

University of New Hampshire Law trains intellectual property, commerce, and technology professionals with skills to meet marketplace needs. An extension of the home to the only academic IP Library in the United States, the IP Mall offers unique content not available on other websites and includes: content includes UNH Law produced papers and scholarship, collections of public domain content not online or spanning time periods before other Web collections, and unique dedicated topical portals.

Inventors & Inventions

You don't have to be a mechanical genius to be an inventor. Anyone can invent - a parent wrestling with a baby sling ...a coach frustrated with slick-soled running shoes ...an office worker determined to keep the computer cords untangled. Inventing is simply finding clever solutions to everyday challenges. Author and inventor Patricia Nolan-Brown has turned common annoyances into ingenious and money-making products. She shares the tricks of her trade in Idea to Invention, a practical guide that helps ordinary people look at their world with the eyes of an inventor.

This book is covered in bubble wrap, one of man's more ingenious creations. It includes dozens of notable patents, from the airplane, brassiere, chain saw, and fire hydrant to the Internet, parachute, plunger, and zipper. The purpose of each device is explained in accessible language, along with background about the inventor, interesting sidebars and history, and an excerpt from the original patent application. The artwork throughout includes photos of original models and patent diagrams created by the inventors themselves, annotated to show exactly how each item works.

What is an invention?

"An invention is a novel and useful idea relating to processes, machines, manufactures, and compositions of matter. It may cover such things as new or improved devices, systems, circuits, chemical compounds, mixtures, etc. It is probable that an invention has been made when something new and useful has been conceived or developed, or when unusual, unexpected, or nonobvious results have been obtained and can be exploited.

An invention can be made solely or jointly with others as coinventors. To be recognized legally, a coinventor must have conceived of an essential element of an invention or contributed substantially to the general concept.

An invention, although unpatentable for various reasons, may still be valuable and important - for example, trade secrets and technical "know-how" encompassing proprietary information of a valuable and confidential nature.

Agencies sponsoring research at Stanford usually require reports of all inventions, whether or not they are considered patentable."

Source: Stanford University - DoResearch - Intellectual Property - Inventions, Patents, and Licensing 9.1, Parts 4B, 4D.

The printing press

Selected Resources

National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees empower young inventors through involvement with the Collegiate Inventors Competition. Since 1990, the mission of the Collegiate Inventors Competition has been to promote exploration in invention, science, engineering, technology and other creative endeavors. This program is a unique platform for recognizing and rewarding the nation’s most outstanding and innovative undergraduate and graduate students and showcasing the emerging ideas and inventions that will shape our future.

This publication is aimed at young studens in recognition of the importance of children and young adults as the creators of our future. The first two parts of this publication are designed to provide basic information about inventions and patents. The aim is to communicate the importance of inventors, their inventions and patents through games, though provoking exercies and concrete examples. Part three provides a roadmap for invention and encourages your students to invent and patent their creations. At the end of this publication are detailed answers to the games, an inventor's glossary and an invention journal to track the young inventor's work.

The Lemelson-MIT Program celebrates outstanding inventors and inspires young people to pursue creative lives and careers through invention. It recognizes emerging collegiate inventors whose inventions could impact important sectors of the global economy and honor mid-career inventors with a prestigious cash prize. They also encourage youth to invent and develop their hands-on skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) through two national grants initiatives for grades 9-12. This site includes the Inventor's Handbook that contains an inventor's most frequently asked questions. About: Jerome H. Lemelson, one of U.S. history’s most prolific inventors, and his wife Dorothy founded the Lemelson-MIT Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. It is funded by The Lemelson Foundation and administered by MIT's School of Engineering.

New books on Inventors in the Stanford Libraries

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New books on Inventions in the Stanford Libraries

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Innovation

VentureBeat: Tech news that matters

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Featured books

This book summarizes the results of Design Thinking Research carried out at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA, and Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. The authors offer readers a closer look at Design Thinking with its processes of innovations and methods. The contents of the articles range from how to design ideas, methods, and technologies via creativity experiments and wicked problem solutions, to creative collaboration in the real world and the connectivity of designers and engineers. The authors show how these methods and strategies work in companies, introduce new technologies and their functions and demonstrate how Design Thinking can influence as diverse a topic area as marriage.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the United States needs reliable and inexpensive energy to propel our economy and protect our national security interests. Game Changers presents five research and development efforts from American universities that offer a cheaper, cleaner, and more secure national energy system. Drawing from the efforts of the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) and other leading university research centers, the book describes some of the energy innovations that will transform our future: natural gas from shales, solar photovoltaics, grid-scale electricity storage, electric cars, and LED lighting. For each of these innovations, the authors detail what is available today, what is near at hand, and what is on the horizon. In addition, they show how extreme energy reliability and performance demands put the United States military at the leading edge of driving energy innovations, and survey potentially game-changing energy technologies currently being put into use by the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force, on base and in forward deployment. The more choices our laboratories put on the table, the less constrained we are in using them to reach the things we really care about—health, family, business, culture, faith, and delight. This is what game changers are ultimately about.

This pioneering work is based on a defined body of knowledge that includes intent, methodology, tools, and measurements. It challenges the popular paradigm that "learned" innovation is impossible, and lays out a systematic process for developing innovation skills. Each chapter can be independently read and utilized in the daily practice of innovation. Real world case studies from financial, governmental and educational sectors illustrate the concepts discussed in this definitive resource.

Selected resources

Global Innovation Summit (February 17-19, 2015) is the centerpiece of Global Innovation Week (February 15-21) in Silicon Valley. The Summit is limited to invitees and accepted applicants. The Summit gives you powerful insights, practical tools, a global community of fellow practitioners, and the chance to design real-time solutions to real-world challenges. Global Innovation Week is open to everyone. Our consortium of organizations is hosting over 20 events with over 1,000 participants from over 50 countries throughout the Bay Area to provide insights, tools, and connections on growing innovation ecosystems. It’s a celebration of innovation ecosystems everywhere.

Patent indicators are used to map aspects of the innovative performance and technological progress of countries, regions or certain specific domains and technology fields. The use of patent statistics for monitoring developments in the field of science and technology has been expanding rapidly over the recent past. Not only have the use of patent indicators increased, but also the diversity and relevance of these indicators have progressed. The OECD has developed new and more sophisticated indicators, notably on patent families, citations, etc. The Stanford University Libraries have a subscription to the OECD iLibrary - login in and browse by theme to access the patent statistics databases.

Intellectual Asset Management (IAM)is a unique publication which reports on intellectual property as a business asset and focuses on the many ways in which it can be used to create significant corporate value. In-depth articles, case studies, interviews and surveys, as well as a widely read blog, provide a high-level corporate readership with cutting-edge insights into how intellectual property is being used to create strategic advantage, forge collaborative relationships, build shareholder returns, generate bottom-line revenue and gain greater leverage in the financial markets. (SU does not have a subscription to this magazine. Blogs on this site are freely available.)

This is the third in the series of guides on “Intellectual Property for Business”. It focuses on patents, a key tool to enhance a company’s ability to draw maximum benefit from new and innovative ideas and technological capabilities. The management of knowledge resources, especially new ideas and concepts, is essential to the ability of any enterprise, to change, adapt, and seize new opportunities as it competes in a fast-changing business environment. By World Intellectual Property Organization.

Library books on technological innovation

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Science and technology statistical abstract
Advances in e-governance : theory and application of technological initiatives

Anthony Trotta. 2018
Permanently online, permanently connected : living and communicating in a POPC world

edited by Peter Vorderer, Dorothée Hefner, Leonard Reinecke, and Christoph Klimmt. 2018

Library materials covering economic aspects of technological innovations

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Technology transfer

Stanford's Office of Technology Licensing - Innovation Inspiration

WIPO's multi-stakeholder platforms

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) actively involves a wide range of stakeholders — from civil society, to academia, business, and more — in order to ensure that all members of society benefit from intellectual property.

Library materials on "Academic-industrial collaboration"

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Handbook of research on science education and university outreach as a tool for regional development

B. Pandu Ranga Narasimharao, Elizabeth Wright, Shashidhara Prasad and Meghana Joshi [editors].. 2017
Leveraging the U.S. science and technology enterprise : hearing before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Fourteenth Congress, second session, May 11, 2016
Leveraging the U.S. science and technology enterprise : hearing before the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, United States Senate, One Hundred Fourteenth Congress, second session, May 11, 2016

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