Patents, Trademarks, and Copyright

Patent and Trademark Resource Center (PTRC) libraries offer PubWEST and PubEAST products for use in patent research. These products are not required for searching patent records but are available for those interested in using them. Because the products are available only in PTRC locations, we recommend that a new searcher first become acquainted with the tools freely available through the Internet.

Those wishing to advance to the “expert” level of manipulating records (and who live fairly close) have the option of using these products. *Please call to confirm before coming to the library.*

PubWEST - Public version of the Web-based Examiner Search Tool

• PubWEST is the “public” version of the patent-search product used by USPTO Examiners. The product requires acclimation but allows access to some international materials as well as the ability to move quickly between a list of search results and the indexed document (such as a patent).
• PubWEST provides identical text and image data sources as PubEAST having the following user and system functions:
  • General patent database searches
  • Searches bound to specific document sections
  • Limited general and bound searches
  • Display of search results based on a range of specified formats
  • Display of page images of patents
  • User-managed Collections of documents
  • User-managed Cases containing searches
  • Local and TCP/IP printing of patent image documents
  • Links to online patent classification guides

​PubEAST - Public Examiner’s Automated Search Tool

PubEAST - provides seamless access to multiple text data sources including the Pre-Grant Publications (US-PGPUB), United States Patents (USPAT), United States Optical Character Recognition (USOCR), European Patent Office (EPO) Abstracts, Japanese Patent Office (JPO) Abstracts, and Foreign Patent Retrieval System (FPRS) databases, as well as image data sources for full and clipped images.

PubEAST accesses the same databases as PubWEST but has a different, less intuitive search interface. Nevertheless, it is considered by some experts to be superior to PubWest. 

Access to PubWEST and PubEAST is provided in the Engineering Library (EER 1.706).  Please ask for assistance.