{{Short description|Search engine from Google that indexes patents and patent applications}} {{Use mdy dates|date=May 2011}}
{{Infobox website | name = Google Patents | logo = Google Patents logo.png | logo_size = 200px | caption = | url = {{URL|https://patents.google.com}} | commercial = | type = Digital library for patents | registration = Not required | author = Google | launch_date = {{start date and age|2006|12|14}} | current_status = | revenue = }} '''Google Patents''' is a search engine from Google that indexes patents and patent applications.
==Contents== Google Patents indexes more than 87 million patents and patent applications with full text from 17 patent offices, including: * United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), * European Patent Office (EPO), * China's National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), * Japan Patent Office (JPO), * Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), * World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), * Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt (DPMA), * Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), * Rospatent (Russia), * Intellectual Property Office (United Kingdom), * National Institute of Industrial Property (France), * the Netherlands Patent Office, * offices of Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and Luxembourg.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/7049585|title=Coverage - Google Help|website=support.google.com}}</ref> These documents include the entire collection of granted patents and published patent applications from each database (which belong to the public domain). US patent documents date back to 1790, EPO and WIPO to 1978.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/2539193?hl=en|title=About Google Patents - Google Help|website=support.google.com}}</ref> Optical character recognition (OCR) has been performed on the older US patents to make them searchable, and Google Translate has been used on all non-English patents to make the English translations searchable.
Google Patents also indexes documents from Google Scholar and Google Books, and has machine-classified them with Cooperative Patent Classification codes for searching.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/7049585?hl=en&ref_topic=6390989|title=Coverage - Google Help|website=support.google.com}}</ref>
Patent litigation information is also available in Google Patents through a partnership with Darts-ip, a global patent litigation database.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|url=https://www.darts-ip.com/darts-ip-google-patents/|title=Darts-ip's data now available with Google Patents {{!}} Darts-ip|website=www.darts-ip.com|language=en-US|access-date=2018-07-20}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite news|url=https://patentlawyermagazine.com/darts-ip-confirm-partnership-with-google-patents/|title=Darts-ip confirm partnership with Google Patents - Patent Lawyer Magazine|date=2018-03-27|work=Patent Lawyer Magazine|access-date=2018-07-20|language=en-GB|archive-date=July 20, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180720201740/https://patentlawyermagazine.com/darts-ip-confirm-partnership-with-google-patents/|url-status=dead}}</ref>
==History and background== The service was launched on December 14, 2006. Google says it uses "the same technology as that underlying Google Books",<ref name="gpAbout">{{cite web|url=https://www.google.com/googlepatents/about.html|title=About page|publisher=Google Patents site|access-date=December 29, 2006}}</ref> allowing scrolling through pages, and zooming in on areas.<ref name="gBlog">{{cite web|url=https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/now-you-can-search-for-us-patents.html|title=Patent announce page|work=official Google Blog site|access-date=December 29, 2006}}</ref> The images are saveable as PNG files.
Google Patents was updated in 2012 with coverage of the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Prior Art Finder tool.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2012/08/improving-google-patents-with-european.html|title=Improving Google Patents with European Patent Office patents and the Prior Art Finder}}</ref>
In 2013, it was expanded to cover World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), German Patent Office ({{langx|de|Deutsches Patent- und Markenamt}}, DPMA), Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), and China's National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA). All foreign patents were also translated to English and made searchable.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://ai.googleblog.com/2013/09/broadening-google-patents.html|title=Broadening Google Patents}}</ref>
In 2015, a new version was introduced at patents.google.com with a new UI, integration of Google Scholar with machine-classified with Cooperative Patent Classifications (CPCs), and search result clustering into CPCs.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://publicpolicy.googleblog.com/2015/07/good-patents-support-innovation-while.html|title=Improving patent quality one search at a time}}</ref>
In 2016, coverage of 11 additional patent offices was announced.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/public-policy/11-new-countries-available-google-patents/|title=11 New Countries Available in Google Patents|date=August 30, 2016|website=Google}}</ref> Support for the USPTO and EPO Boolean search syntax (proximity, wildcards, title/abstract/claims fields) was introduced, as well as visual graphs of inventors, assignees and CPCs by date, a thumbnail grid view of search results and downloadable result sets as CSV.<ref>https://patents.google.com/ "New! boolean search, graphs, thumbnail grids and downloads". Retrieved November 7, 2016.</ref><ref>https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/7049475?hl=en&ref_topic=6390989 About Google Patents - Searching</ref>
In 2018, global litigation information has been added. Google Patents pages display if a patent (or any member of its family) has a litigation history anywhere in the world and provides a link to the Darts-ip patent cases database.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" />
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
==External links== *[https://patents.google.com Google Patents] new search homepage *[https://patents.google.com/advanced Google Advanced Patent Search]
{{Google LLC}}
Patents Category:Patent search services Category:Internet properties established in 2006