Oxford LibGuides: Engineering: Patents and Standards

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For more information about searching for patents, please see the following guide:

British Standards
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Patent Information
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Need Advice?

Oxford University Innovation can provide advice and further information to researchers thinking about patenting their research.

https://innovation.ox.ac.uk/

What is a Patent?

"A patent is an exclusive right granted for an invention, which is a product or a process that provides, in general, a new way of doing something, or offers a new technical solution to a problem. In order to be patentable, the invention must fulfill certain conditions." (WIPO, 2013) To learn more about patents, see the following links:

Key Patents resources

Try searching the following resources to find patents (hover over each link for more information):

Intellectual Property Office: About patents (GB)
The Patents Publication Enquiry Service covers all GB applications published and granted after 3 January 2007 and all GB corrected documents published after 1 April 2010.
Espacenet Patent Search (EPO European Patent Office)
Espacenet offers free access to more than 70 million patent documents worldwide, containing information about inventions and technical developments from 1836 to today.
Espacenet - Worldwide Patent Search
Esp@cenet - worldwide database includes full collection of published patent applications from 80+ countries around the world.
US Patent and Trademark Office
Patentscope (WIPO)
Patent Cooperation Treaty - WIPO provides access to database of published international patent applications.

Key Standards resources

The RSL subscribes to two major sources of standards. IEEE Xplore Digital Library also includes IEEE conference proceedings, journal articles, and other technical information:

British Standards Online (BSOL)
Full-text standards, including European Standards and Eurocodes.
Note: To access this resource off-campus or when connected to Eduroam VPN is required.Please note you will need the FileOpen plug in to access BSI documents within BSOL - please find more information in the box below.
ASTM Compass
This platform includes standards and technical engineering information covering a broad range of engineering disciplines.
IEEE Xplore
Standards, Conference Proceedings and complete e-journals collections from IEEE and IET.

FileOpen plugin for BSOL

You will need to have the FileOpen plug-in installed in order to access BSI documents within BSOL. To download the plug-in, please click here. In some cases, you may need to contact your IT department to install the plugin. Further information is on the British Standards website.