Featured Federal Document

Official Gazette of the United States Patent Office

This month’s featured fed doc is one that can cause a bit of panic and fright to researcher and reference librarian alike. Searching for a patent can be tedious, scary, and a little difficult, but can be accomplished with the right information and tools. First of all, a patent is different from a trademark servicemark, or copyright. A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (uspto). The term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed, subject to the payment of maintenance fees. U.S. patent grants are effective only within the United States, U.S. territories, and U.S. possessions. Under certain circumstances, patent term extensions or adjustments may be available. The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling” the invention in the United States or “importing” the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention. Once a patent is issued, the patentee must enforce the patent without aid of the USPTO.

There are three types of patents:

• Utility-these may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof;
• Design-may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture; and
• Plant-may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant. (United States Patent and Trademark Office, October 2014)

In order to search for a patent, particularly one issues before the 1900’s, you must know the patent number, year, and patentee (patent holder’s name).  If you have this information, you can search the indexes and or the Gazette and look for the patent holder’s name. Both contain indexes of patentees in alphabetical order. Once you have this information, you can search the index for that year (either by name or number); once you find it, the index will give you the Gazette and Monthly volume number along with date and page. The Gazette contains diagrams, the description of the patent (item), the patentee and date the patent was filed. The Gazette does not have the full patent, it only contains the summary; the full patent is available at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (uspto). If you don’t know the patent number, you will have to search the indexes year by year and look for the patentee. The Indiana State Library has the Gazette in print v.1-v. 821 (1872-1965) at call number p.d. 608 un 58os; volumes after 1965 can be found in the federal documents collection at C 21.5/6-2:

You can also search full text patents 1976-current on the uspto website: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm ; search PDF Image patents pre-1976 here:  www.uspto.gov/patents-application-process/search-patents. To get more in-depth searching and assistance, Indiana has Patent Depository Libraries:  the Central Library of the Indianapolis Public Library has databases for patent searching and a staff member trained specifically on patents to assist; to find out more information, visit their website:  http://www.imcpl.org/resources/guides/science/patents. Purdue University also has resources and staff to assist as well:  http://guides.lib.purdue.edu/patents.  

FD BA 11-9-2015