SOME OF THE WEB SITES FOR PRIOR ART SEARCH:

The purpose of prior art search is to know the patented inventions of similar nature, so that duplication of research can be avoided. This exercise can identify the competing ideas and guides to plan for an alternate project. When key words are entered in the search engine, a list of patent numbers and titles are returned. If the list is too small, key words are made broader and if the list is too large, more key words are added to narrow the search. While choosing the key words, they have to match with the strings used by the patentee and if the result turns out to be zero patents, then other nearest synonyms have to be entered. Hence, prior art search has to be done only by technical personnel who have knowledge in various technical fields and who can think of various synonym key words rather than a blinker approach that may be followed by others without any lateral thinking.

Following are the other some of the WEB SITES which have latest information on the patents. 


www.wipo.int              - World Intellectual Property Right
                                   Organization, Geneva

www.delphion.com       - patent data base of IBM 

www.uspto.gov           - United States Patent and Trademark Office 

www.patent.gov.uk     - United Kingdom patent database 

www.owgm.com          - Canadian patent data base 

www.european-patent-office.org      - European patent data base

www.tifac.org.in         - TIFAC site on patents 

www.indianpatents.org.in - Indian site 

Derwent of UK, is one of the oldest patent search agencies and does the patent search covering nearly 30 countries. Recently, it is possible to do the same on the delphion site on payment basis.