Discover new techniques for researching patents and trademarks!

Patent and Trademark Information: Uses and Perspectives addresses an essential yet undervalued and often underused class of scientific and technical information. Library staff, information specialists, corporation heads and administrators, inventors, school faculty, scientists, engineers, and engineering, science and library students will gain valuable insight on historical research, practical applications, and the availability and accessibility of patenting authorities. This book focuses on methods for searching international patents and trademark information for patrons of the library using the Internet, databases, and other sources.

This book contains tips and nuts-and-bolts advice from experienced librarians who either practice in patent and trademark depository libraries or are experts in researching patents for library patrons. Their advice will help you navigate decision points and search paths for locating patent and trademark information from state, federal, and international sources. Special features include tables and figures, as well as bibliographies that provide extensive resources for locating additional information.

The first half of the book is dedicated to issues involving patents, including:

• disseminating enemy technical information during World War II
• basic novelty patent searching in seven steps
• using patent information for historical genealogical research
• esp@cenet®—Europe’s network of patent databases
• regional patent systems—a challenge for the international searcher
• patent data for technology assessment—applications, patent databases, and retrieval methods

The second half of Patent and Trademark Information guides you in searching out trademarks, company and owner names, and databases. An entire chapter is dedicated to searching for trademark and/or company names for each of the 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. Another chapter investigates five free international Web-based patent sites.