Patent Searching

Abstract

Patents are the exclusive rights conferred to the inventor for the innovation they brought up. The research and development resulted in a massive number of patents applications, which subsequently turns into issued patents. Every country is maintaining its patent database; some of them are freely available to the public. These are available through specific online search engines provided by a national patent office such as Espacenet by European Patent Office and InPASS by Indian Patent Office. However, data mining and retrieval of an intended patent from such a huge data demands a specialized skill set to operate search engines and knowledge about typical terms, keywords, and technical keywords pertaining to patents. This chapter provides insight into a systematic review of patent information retrieval systems in connection to the patent classification systems, types of patent searches, information sources, various search engines, and their peculiar characteristics.