Using Patent Databases and Finding Patents

• Searching by number.  A patent number or patent application number should lead directly to the document. Espacenet and Google Patents are not completely comprehensive in their coverage of the patent literature but have impressive coverage.

Many patent documents are available to the public:  

• As legal documents, they have numbering conventions and special abbreviations
• You may find them with a regular Internet search; a patent database has tailored search advantages.

The European Patent Office provides a country code table to help format a search and understand 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 --- Works in Google, Google Patents, and Espacenet
• US 9796219 
• 9796219 --- Works in the USPTO Patent Public Search "Basic" search (use lead 0s to make seven characters if you start with fewer) and in Espacenet
• 9,796,219 --- Works in the USPTO Patent Public Search "Basic" search but not in Espacenet

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Searches may reveal associated numbers.  These two documents are a pair: 

• US2017136834 (A1) WIRELESS TIRE MONITORING SYSTEM (application)  
• US9796219 (B2) WIRELESS TIRE MONITORING SYSTEM (issued patent) 

• As noted in the "Kind Codes," an "A" document is an application and an "B" document is an issued patent.

Also, some U.S. patents have special prefixes:

• USD345235 --- "D" indicates a design patent
• USPP3452 ---"PP" indicates a plant patent.