Over 30 million patents have been published world wide and approximately 1 million new ones are published every year.
This makes patents the largest single body of technical information available. It's estimated that around 80% of the information disclosed in patents is never published anywhere else, so it's important to be able to search them.
- Online databases: GB Espacenet (UK), EP Espacenet (European) and WIPO PatentScope (World)
- ESPACE® ACCESS is a DVD search tool giving bibliographic data on European patent applications and PCT pamphlets including searchable abstracts in English. The data is fully downloadable. Hyperlinks enable access to complete documents on Espacenet. Links are also available to the International Patent Classification Scheme (IPC) on the World Intellectual Property Organization website
- DERWENT WORLD PATENTS INDEX (DWPI) produced by Thomson Scientific, provides access to information from more than 26.3 million patent documents, giving details of over 12.8 million inventions, from 40 patent authorities
- DERWENT PATENT CITATION INDEX(DPCI), produced by Thomson Scientific, provides access to 54.5 million patent and literature citations found in 5.5 million patent families.
- INPADOC/FAMILY AND LEGAL STATUS brings together patent families, i.e., all equivalent patents that share common priorities for a particular invention. The patent families contain information on over 50 million patents and 42 million legal status actions.