Big news! Huge news!
Google has gone out and created a text index of ALL seven million plus US patents. No longer is keyword searching limited to just 1974 onwards. UNREAL!
It is called Google Patent Search.
Coverage: “patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006.” But not (yet) “patent applications, international patents, or U.S. patents issued over the last few months…”
My initial thoughts:
- The “advanced search page” provides a nice search interface for the database: http://www.google.com/advanced_patent_search
- Doing a search also provides a list of forward (references cited) and backwards (cited by) patents. Very useful!
- The images provided appear to be PNGs. No PDF download option (yet?). Of course, if you are looking for a free patent PDF, you could use one of the programs mentioned here.
[Thanks to those of you who send me emails pointing to this today]
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