An intellectual property law firm: patents, trademarks, and copyrights.

Looking Up a Patent or Patent Application

How do I look up a patent?

You can look up patents and patent applications using Public Patent Search, Google Patents, or other databases like Escapenet.

How do I look up US patents?

To find issued US patents, use the Public Patent Search which has a basic or advanced search function.

How do I look up US patent applications?

To find US patent applications, use he Public Patent Search which has a basic or advanced search function.

How do I look up international patents?

To find issued international patents, use:

Google Patents; or
Escapenet.

What is the information you need to look up a specific patent or patent application?

You will need to know something about the patent or patent application to look up the patent or patent application.

Some search terms you can use to look up the patent or patent application if you don't know specific numbers are:

inventor name, or
owner/assignee.

Some other search terms you can use to look up the patent or patent application are:

patent number, or
application number.

How you I find the patent number or application number for a patent or patent application?

You can find the patent number or patent application number by searching with the search terms such as the inventor name or owner/assignee name.

You will then see the patent number or patent application number when viewing the individual patent or patent application document.

What will I find when looking up a patent or patent application?

By looking up the patent or patent application you will view the published patent or published patent application, which will give information about:

numbers (patent numbers, application numbers, and publication numbers);
parts of the patent (abstract, description, diagrams, and claims); and
cited references.

By viewing the published patent or published patent application document, you will not be able to view full patent or patent application file, which is all the documents related to the patent application (also called the patent prosecution history). To view all the documents related to the patent application you will need to view the full patent or patent application file in the Patent Center and then you will see:

all rejections from the Patent Office;
responses to any Patent Office rejections; and
patent term extensions.

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