Patent Equivalents
A "patent family" can be defined as all patent equivalents for a single invention. All of the published patent applications from various countries and the subsequent granted patents on an invention are commonly referred to as patent equivalents. They are not “true equivalents” in that each country may have different regulations for filing and different interpretations of the invention. It may include multiple patents in some countries because of differences in patent laws. When applying for a U.S. patent, inventors will need to know of any “prior art” which includes similar foreign patents or patent equivalents.
Non-U.S. Patent Sites
Many national patent offices now have individual web patent databases. Be aware that some sites are best searched in their native language.
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Canadian Patent DatabaseThe Canadian Patent Database contains all Canadian patents (both applications and granted patents) since 1924. Contains only bibliographic data, titles and images. No abstracts or claims data are available for patents granted prior to August 15, 1978.
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DEPATISnetDEPATISnet is a free service provided by the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (GPTO). Visitors can conduct online searches in patent publications from around the world stored in the database of DEPATIS. Data records are imported into DEPATIS in the original language. For example, Japanese patents will have English abstracts but French documents will be in French as this is the way the data was supplied to DEPATIS. No translations are provided.
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The Lens: Patent SearchThe Lens covers over 100 million patent documents from around the world. Includes classification searching and quick access to patent family information.
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PATENTSCOPEFree tool. One of the few sources that will allow researchers to simultaneously search across multiple countries' patent collections. Some results will link out to full-text, depending on availability.
Iowa State University