Innovation, without insight, is essentially impossible. And when you’re in a constantly evolving industry, insight into your competitors’ IP and patents can prove invaluable when you’re trying to innovate within your own company.
Unfortunately for most, finding reliable sources of patent information is difficult. Some resources are difficult to navigate, with information that’s hard to understand; others don’t provide thorough enough patent information for a truly deep analysis.
If you’re interested in performing patent research, whether it’s to spur innovation, bolster competitive power, or simply get educated on your competitors’ next moves, it’s always better to have the full picture.
Let’s take a look at some different patent search websites, and determine the best option for gathering patent information.
Google Patents
Google Patents is a free tool that allows users to search the complete texts of patents from all across the globe, including 7 million patents in the U.S. alone. For business owners who don’t have the budget to hire a firm to perform patent searches for them, Google Patents is a good option.
Google Patents’ Advanced Search provides a number of impressive filters, especially helpful for searchers who are astute and well-versed in Google’s database and features. Some of those features include inventor name, patent office, filing status and patent type.
Another plus of the Google database is that it looks and functions similar to Google standard search engine. For those who are familiar with, and often use, Google’s search engine, this patent database can be a comfortable place to start patent research.
Of course, there are drawbacks to using Google’s patent database, as well. For those who are unfamiliar with Boolean search operators, it can be difficult to get the most accurate and useful search results. To get the best possible results, users need to have a deep understanding of how Google Patents’ search engine works.
Google Patents has also been criticized for database errors, with some patents not appearing, even when searched for specifically by a user. For many searchers, Google Patents casts the widest net in terms of patent results, and the database needs to be supplemented with research from a different database to get a complete patent picture.
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office holds an online database of millions of U.S. patents and has remained a go-to source for inventors and businesses in search of patent information.
While the USPTO is the source of all U.S. patents, the website itself is difficult to navigate. It also doesn’t return searches as quickly as many of the other databases—something that’s troublesome for searchers who are frustrated by wait times or interruptions.
FreshPatents
FreshPatents takes a unique approach to organizing and funneling users’ patent searches by allowing them to choose from pre-selected categories or to search patents from the top companies in the world.
The FreshPatents homepage is uniquely visual, something you won’t enjoy when scouring Google Patents or the USPTO database. Search for patents in a number of industries, including gaming, cosmetics, smartphones, and social networks.
One of FreshPatents’ selling points is its ability to provide its users with new patent applications before approval or denial of the application by the USPTO.
While FreshPatents is perhaps easier to navigate than Google Patents or the USPTO database, it still has its shortcomings. There is very little visual media related to each patent, so you’ll need to supplement your patent search with searches on other search engines to get the most in-depth view of the patent information.
Patent Searches: Important Things to Consider
Even if you become well-versed in multiple patent search databases, memorizing each search engine’s unique features, requirements and loopholes, it might still be hard to analyze the information for relevance to your own company.
Another important thing to consider when performing patent research on any of these sites is that each of them function essentially the same. They provide a ton of text and information on individual patents, but few show the complete patent family or the entire patent journey.
IPVision’s patent mapping tool, see-the-forest.com, provides a much more comprehensive picture of patents, including “parent” and “child” patents and any related “prior art” citations. It doesn’t just give you the information in cumbersome text, either. See-the-forest.com utilizes color-coded graphs, images, and graphics to communicate the patent family in a more comprehensible fashion. The tool also provides information from a patent’s International Patent Family, utilizing data from the European Patent Office/Espace system.
This holistic view of patents provides deeper, more analytical information—and saves you, the searcher, substantial amounts of time in research, confusion, and futile database scouring.
You can register for a free account at see-the-forest.com and take advantage of IPVision’s patent search and analysis software.
If you’re in the market for even more robust patent insights, IPVision Advantage is an invaluable tool.
IPVision Advantage will provide you with custom industry studies that will give you top-notch insight into your competitors’ technology and developments, so you can anticipate any disruption and get to work on your own innovations.
The IPVision Advantage dashboard is easy to navigate and provides continuous patent updates and discoveries, so you never fall behind on your industry’s trends or developments.
Contact IPVision today for a free demonstration of our Advantage dashboard.
