Regulatory Affairs for Drugs, Biologics and Medical Devices: Patents

International Patent Offices

To see if your idea has been patented abroad, refer to searchable databases made available from other International Intellectual Property Offices.

Many countries provide free online access to patent collections.  Some available databases are:

• European Patent Office (EPO) provides esp@cenet a network of Europe’s patent databases, and access to machine translation of European patents for some languages. EPO recommends these free databases for patent research.
• Japan Patent Office (JPO) – provides access to machine translations of Japanese patents.
• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) provides PATENTSCOPE ® Search Service, a full-text search of published international patent applications, machine translations for some documents and a list of international patent databases.
• Korean Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS)
• State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People’s Republic of China and China Intellectual Property Net (CNIPR) – These sites provide access to machine translation of Chinese patents.
• Other International Intellectual Property Offices that provide searchable patent databases: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland,France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan.  

For additional search resources, contact the local Patent and Trademark Depository Library, visit the USPTO Public Search Facility or the USPTO Main STIC Library.  The staff in the Main STIC Library are experts on foreign patents and able to help the public as needed.

European Patent Office (EPO) provides esp@cenet a network of Europe’s patent databases. This site also provides access to machine translation of European patents for some languages.

• Introduction to  Espacenet

• Before starting your search...

• European Patent Office Patent Tour
  

• Stopfakes.Gov -- Toolkits about the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) environment in various countries.       

• For additional resources, contact your local Patent and Trademark Depository Library;  

visit the USPTO Public Search Facility or the USPTO Main STIC Library.

• The staff in the Main STIC Library are experts on foreign patents and able to help the public as needed.