This database is freely available to the general public via the Internet.

Espacenet, developed by the European Patent Office, is one of the most comprehensive patent databases available on the internet. It contains over 130 million patents from over 100 countries, many with full-text page images, available for free.

The starting date varies greatly by country, with the earliest being 1836 for the United States. The availability of any given field also varies greatly by county and time period. For example, only about 50% of the patents have a title field and only 33% have an English abstract. See the country-by-country Full-text Coverage and Bibliographic (Citation) Coverage Charts that show the exact date ranges of full-text and bibliographic citation availability. Note that for many countries, bibliographic records are available much farther back in time than the full-text. View the recorded video tutorial for more information.  

Comprehensive topical searching is best done via the Classification Search query screen using the new Cooperative Patent Classification system. However, this approach requires careful research to identify all appropriate codes and skill in using Boolean logic to combine them properly.

This site permits downloading of the full-text of entire patents with a single command, including U.S. patents. Until one downloads the patent text, one can only print a single page at a time. To download the full-text in pdf format, click on the patent title from any search result listing. Then click on the Original documents link on the left, then click on the Download link directly above and to the right of the displayed text. Do NOT use your browser's print, download, or save commands. Once it is downloaded, one can print the patent pdf file from within Adobe Reader.

Espacenet has partnered with Google Translate to create Patent Translate, which provides translations (of the patent abstract, description and claims) between English and 31 other languages including German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Chinese, and more. Translation from and into French and German is also available for 27 of the 31 languages. See the Patent Translate webpage for more information.

For more information and help:

• ESPACENET (quick guide) (PDF - 336 KB)
• Pocket Guide
• Classification Searches (help)
• Watch an introductory video on the Espacenet Home Page.

Please refer to the UB Libraries Patent Databases Research Guide for a detailed overview of searching both free and UB subscription patent databases.

Varies by country, oldest is 1836 for U.S. patents.

• U.S. Patent & Trademark Office Patent Search