Many (probably most) patent documents are available to the public. Remember that:
- As legal documents, they have numbering conventions and special abbreviations
- Regular Google may be fine for locating the item you need
- Sometimes you will need to go to --- or it will be more straightforward to go to --- a patent database.
The European Patent Office provides a country code table to help with forming a search or understanding a patent's origin. For example:
- "US" designates a document from the United States
- "MX" is for Mexico
- "DE" is for Germany.
We might expect to see any of these formats for the same granted (issued) U.S. patent, depending upon the person doing the citing or upon the database. Be sure to check on which is required --- especially if you try one that gives "0" results.
- US9,796,219
- US 9,796,219
- US9796219
- US 9796219
- 9796219
- 9,796,219
As with the record for patent US9796219, Espacenet may show other numbers besides the one you searched. In fact, the record retrieved with the search is US2017136834 (A1). US9796219 (B2) is in the "Also published field."
- This is a good place to note "Kind Codes."
- The "A" document is an application and the "B" document is the issued patent.
Also, with U.S. patents, you may see special prefixes:
- USD345235 --- "D" indicates a design patent
- USPP3452 ---"PP" indicates a plant patent.
