Search
Search the Patent Record by Number, Inventor or Assignee
A bare patent number jumps straight to that record. Anything else is matched against patent titles, inventor names and assignee organisations.
How the search behaves
Entering a bare patent number goes straight to that record. Any other query is matched against patent titles, inventor names and assignee organisations across the whole archive.
The index covers granted patents only. Pending applications, filings that were abandoned before grant, and documents filed only outside the United States are outside its scope.
Searching by number
Most numbers are bare digits. A letter prefix marks a different kind of document and is part of the number: D for a design patent, PP for a plant patent, RE for a reissue. Entering the prefix matters — 622633 and D622633 are different documents.
Searching by name
Inventor names are stored as they appear on the document, which is not always how they appear elsewhere. Middle initials come and go between filings, surnames with particles are recorded inconsistently, and transliterated names appear in several spellings across a career. Searching a surname alone usually returns more than searching a full name.
Assignee names carry legal-entity suffixes that vary between filings, and a group’s holdings are frequently split across subsidiary names that look unrelated. If an organisation returns less than expected, it is worth trying the parent and the operating company separately.
When search is the wrong tool
Keyword search fails in a specific and predictable way on patents: the same invention is described in different words by different drafters, sometimes deliberately. Where you are exploring a field rather than chasing a known document, browse the classification index instead. Classification is assigned by an examiner on the basis of what the invention is, so it groups filings that share no vocabulary at all.
What this search cannot do
It searches this archive, which holds a compiled subset of granted US patents rather than the full corpus. A query returning nothing is not evidence that no such patent exists. For a prior-art or freedom-to-operate search, the official databases are the only adequate starting point, and the result of one is a legal judgement rather than a list.