About the workshop

This workshop will look at the Library's main sources for patent documents, how to search these databases and what they tell you about the patents themselves. We will focus on the Espacenet database but will also look briefly at selected patent office websites and other databases useful for finding patents, e.g. GooglePatents and SciFinder. We will include an introduction to the patenting process and how to read a patent because it is relevant to the literature searching process, but this is NOT aimed at researchers who want to take out a patent.

Learning outcomes

After attending this workshop, you will:

• understand what a patent is and how to read it
• know where to search for patent documents
• be able to search the patent databases effectively
• understand what information the patent databases provide

Speaker profiles

David Stacey
Linda Humphreys

Who should attend

Doctoral students