Google adds free patent searching

Google has now launched its own free patent search facility at www.google.co.uk/patents. It is not the only free search facility on the Internet, nor is it the most comprehensive, but it is certainly the easiest one to use. Google is currently indexing the seven million patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and is to add other patent sources in the coming months. The Google service allows users to search for patents by keywords, name of inventor, or through keywords. You can, of course, already access the US Patent and Trademark Office yourself at www.uspto.gov and the European patent office at www.european-patent-office.org . Once you know the patent number, obtained either through the uspto site or Google, you can then download a PDF of the whole patent using www.pat2pdf.org. There is no guarantee that any of the patented ideas actually work of course, “Faster than Light” produces a US patented idea that as far as we know defies the laws of Physics and “Perpetual Motion” produces a whole bunch.