Oxford LibGuides: Engineering: Patents

Patent Library Guide

For more information about searching for patents, please see the following guide:

Patent Information
by Alessandra Vetrugno Last Updated Mar 29, 2021 150 views this year

Need Advice?

The University of Oxford has a spin-out company called Isis Innovation Limited that can provide advice and further information to researchers thinking about patenting their research.

Isis Innovation Limited

Training Sessions

Research Skills sessions on patent searching are run during term time in the RSL Training Room.

Please find the next scheduled session here:
RSL Training sessions calendar

What is a Patent?

"A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. In order to be patentable, the invention must fulfill certain conditions." (WIPO, 2013) To learn more about patents, see the following links:

Key resources

Try searching the following resources to find patents (hover over each link for more information):

Intellectual Property Office: About patents (GB)
The Patents Publication Enquiry Service covers all GB applications published and granted after 3 January 2007 and all GB corrected documents published after 1 April 2010.
Espacenet Patent Search (EPO European Patent Office)
Espacenet offers free access to more than 70 million patent documents worldwide, containing information about inventions and technical developments from 1836 to today.
Espacenet - Worldwide Patent Search
Esp@cenet - worldwide database includes full collection of published patent applications from 80+ countries around the world. You can choose to search the entire patent database, or to link to a patent office database by country (e.g GB Esp@cenet).
US Patent and Trademark Office
Patentscope (WIPO)
Patent Cooperation Treaty - WIPO provides access to database of published international patent applications.