Patents and Trademarks: Quick Start
Looking to find patents or trademarks as part of a prior art search or researching IP? Check out these top databases for finding national and international patents and trademarks. Also check out USPTO's new IP Identifier - answer short set of questions to help figure out what types of intellectual property you might have or should have.
NEW: USPTO launched a startup training course, so be sure to check that out for your business too!
Make sure to take a look at the Patents and Trademarks pages in this guide for how to search and more databases! Looking for disciplinary databases? Be sure to check our A-Z Database List!
Find Patents & Trademarks
- USPTO Patent Public SearchPatent Public Search is USPTO’s new comprehensive patent and patent application search tool that replaces PatFT and AppFT. Patent Public Search covers all US patents and published patent applications from 1790 to the present. Users can customize the search interface, explore full patent documents and export results to a spreadsheet. **Note: Interface is designed for Chromium-based browsers and some functionality may be lost if using other browsers.
- Dimensions PlusDimensions Plus indexes more than 100 million publications, ranging from articles published in scholarly journals, books and book chapters, to preprints and conference proceedings. Dimensions Plus is an extensive and fully interlinked database with publications, grants, patents, clinical trials, datasets and policy documents. 1600s to present.
- Lens.orgSearches patent and scholarly publication data, with over 100 million patent records across 95 jurisdictions world-wide, and over 200 million scholarly records from PubMed, Crossref, and more. Many filtering and search options with advanced boolean functions, structured searches, classification searches and more. Lens.org also includes options for searching biological sequences included in patents.
- USPTO TrademarksSearch database for trademark registrations and applications by mark, owner, or serial/registration number with Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS)
Learn about IP
USPTO regularly offers free webinars and other events:
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Path to a Patent - 8 weekly webinars covering basics, searching, examination and more, offered quarterly
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Trademark Basics Bootcamp - 8 weekly webinars covering basics, searching, and maintaining your mark, offered quarterly
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Invention-Con - inspirational stories, resources and more at this annual event