Patent Searching Help Tools & References

[RTM]

Hey all

Thought I'd start a thread as a place to stash useful patent tools that are not currently in Lugz' Sticky. Every so often I come across a fun and useful link that isn't as straightforward as DATAMP, Google Patents, but may have some interest to this group.

This link came to me through the DATAMP organization, and includes a list of all patents that were litigated between 1776 and 1886, and a brief summary of the lawsuit. It was suggested to the patent stewards at DATAMP that they use them to fill in more details on some patents, which may not have been known to have been produced, etc. So at some point down the road, DATAMP may glean out all the useful information, but until that time, it may help someone with tool research.

Federal Decisions - Cases argued and determined in the supreme, circuit and district courts of the United States. Arranged by William G. Myer · Volume 25 (1886)

Federal Decisions

www.google.com

Another link, which I use for European Patents, is

Espacenet – patent search

Espacenet: free access to millions of patent documents. Find out if your invention is unique or if other inventors have filed patent applications that are considered to be prior art.

worldwide.espacenet.com

I find this to be a bit user hostile, and often doesn't have patent detail, but sometimes I get lucky and find one.


Here is a link to an index which happens to contain restored drawings of X Patents. Currently shown looking for augers, which sometimes seem to be someone's name. This is a huge archive, not just tools

National Archives NextGen Catalog

The online portal to the records held at the National Archives, and information about those records.

catalog.archives.gov

You can do things like this

National Archives NextGen Catalog

The online portal to the records held at the National Archives, and information about those records.

catalog.archives.gov

or this

National Archives NextGen Catalog

The online portal to the records held at the National Archives, and information about those records.

catalog.archives.gov

 

[RTM]

Here is another one I just stumbled across, a by date listing of every patent, by year.

I was searching for something that had the date on it, and nothing more. I started scrolling thru the list, opening anything that might have been covered by this shape.

1879 - Patents Sitemap

Of course, I started at the other end of the list.

Meet a corn grater.

US222974A - Improvement in corn-graters - Google Patents

 

[californiamilleghia]

Thanks , at one time there were libraries of patent copies across the country ,

I visited the Sunnyvale Ca office a few times before Internet was the thing ,

 

[RTM]

Here are a couple of posts I wrote in the Introduce Yourself thread, using wildcards on DATAMP,

Hi from Utah!

I inherited a bunch of tools from my grandfather who owned an auto repair shop from 1946 to 1980, even though I worked as a mechanic myself there are tools I cannot identify, I did recently identify this though and got it working.

www.garagejournal.com

And a bit of a facilitated brute force method for filling in missing numbers in a string, following from the above thoughts

Hi from Utah!

I inherited a bunch of tools from my grandfather who owned an auto repair shop from 1946 to 1980, even though I worked as a mechanic myself there are tools I cannot identify, I did recently identify this though and got it working.

www.garagejournal.com

 

[RTM]

Here is a new one to me, an index of patent models.

https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/8683588/patent-models-index-smithsonian-institution/225

Its OCR searchable, but doesn't have images. You have to take the number, and drop it into DATAMP, USPTO, google patents. etc