Patents

An overview of material relating to patents the Library receives from the United States Patent and Trademark Office as a result of being a Patent and Trademark Resource Center, including: help guides, videos, search software, the full text of United States patents.

Related Guides

Patent Subject Searching

Catalog Searches

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

How can I view patent images on the web?

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has loaded all US patents on their website,www.uspto.gov. Those published after 1975 are available as text files, readable with any web browser. However, those published before 1976 are available only as images, called TIFF files. To view these files you will need to install a piece of software called a TIFF reader, available free on the Internet. To complicate the issue, even for those more recent patents published as text files (post 1975), to view the drawings, one must also have the TIFF reader installed.

The patent office has a page with explanations of what readers are available. The recommended file one can install is alternaTIFF. That is the file installed on all of the library's computers.

Alternatively, you may view US Patents back through the 1920's at the European Patent Office Patent Search Page, espacenet. This is a great place to find full-text US patents. They are in Acrobat Reader format, a piece of software now installed on most computers. Another free site,pat2pdf , offers Acrobat formatted patents.

I've heard of Invention Marketing Fraud, but how can I protect myself?

For more information visit the National Inventor Fraud Center, or the InventorEd Invention Promoter Caution List.

Is there a Local Inventors Club?

The Indiana Inventors Association is a group whose members are inventors, engineers, small business owners and others. They publish an informative monthly newsletter which offers interesting articles along with the announcement of the program for the next monthly membership meeting. These educational programs about inventing, patenting, marketing, venture capital, etc. are dinner meetings held the first Tuesday of each month at 6:30. For information about the meeting site or membership in the Association, please contact Dave Zedonis, the President of the club, by e-mail at dzedonis@att.net or call Randall Redelman at 317-733-0578 or Robert Brand at 317-823-0175.