Q. I'm trying to find patents, where can I look?

Patents can be hard to find as there is no one place to look and the language used to describe them can often be deliberately opaque. For further information about finding patents see our guide to Standards and Patents.

Some sources of patent information:

esp@cenet is the European Patent Office network of patent servers. It is the best place to start searching for freely available patents.

Google Patent Search provides full-text of the entire collection of issued patents and millions of patent applications made available by the USPTO, from patents issued in the 1790s through to the present.

DEPATISnet from the German Patent and Trademark Office provides access to the full-text of patents from many European countries.