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Intellectual Property

Copyright, Patent, Trademark, and Trade Secrets

Subscription Resources

Westlaw:  Intellectual Property:  Patent (Westlaw password required)
Westlaw hosts a suite of materials for the patent researcher, covering administrative materials, litigation resources, legislative & regulatory primary documents, and authoritative secondary sources.

Westlaw Practical Law:  Patent Litigation (Westlaw password required)
Westlaw hosts a suite of practical content including checklists, practice notes, summary overviews, and forms related to the practice of patent law to help practitioners stay in compliance and efficient in their workflows.

Westlaw Practical Law:  Patent Counseling & Transactions (Westlaw password required)
The Practical Law Center focuses on how-to guides and explanations of current law and practice, example documents, and clauses with drafting notes, practitioner-written articles, and legal updates.

United States Patents & Applications
This Westlaw database contains patent applications from March, 2011-present, granted patents from 1976-present, and patent assignments from 1980-present.

Lexis+ Practice Area:  Patent Law (Lexis+ password required)
Lexis+ hosts a suite of information for the patent researcher, covering USPTO filings, International Trade Commission decisions, Chisum on Patents, and more.

Lexis+ Practical Guidance:  Intellectual Property & Technology:  Patents (Lexis+ password required)
Lexis+ Practice Advisor contains resources focused on patent law, including annotated forms, practitioner insights, and drafting guidance.

Bloomberg Law Practical Guidance:  Patent Term (Bloomberg Law password required)
This Bloomberg Law suite contains checklists, charts, and forms for patent terms and patent term extensions.

Bloomberg Law Practical Guidance:  Patent Applications (Bloomberg Law password required)
This Bloomberg Law suite contains checklists, charts, and forms for applying for patents.

Bloomberg Law Practice Center:  Patents & Trade Secrets (Bloomberg Law password required)
This Bloomberg Law database contains U.S. patent grants, including utility patents (1836-present), design patents (1843-present), plant patents (1931-present), and reissue patents (1838-present).

Secondary Sources

Below is a short list of treatises in the ASU Library collection related to the legal issues of patent law. You can search for other resources in the ASU Library catalog by using subject headings such as:  Intellectual Property -- United States or Patent Laws and Legislation -- United States.

Chisum on Patents (Donald S. Chisum, 2021)
Chisum on Patents provides thorough and authoritative coverage of patent law. The treatise covers all issues relating to patent law and includes references to legal doctrine, statutes, regulations, and case law. Also on Lexis+ (Lexis+ password required).

Intellectual Property Law Collection (available on campus or remotely with ASURITE)
The HeinOnline Intellectual Property Law Collection offers a number of resources focusing on copyrights, patents, and trademarks in the United States. The Collection includes over 100 legislative histories, Code of Federal Regulations Title 37, U.S. Code Titles 17 and 35, the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure, over 400 books, and more than 50 periodicals that focus on intellectual property.

Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (USPTO, 9th ed.)
This free website provides Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, consolidated laws and rules, and archived manuals.

Examples and Explanations:  Intellectual Property (Stephen M. McJohn, 2021)
Using Examples & Explanations pedagogy, this study guide covers the core concepts of intellectual property law, including copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secrets. Also on Aspen Learning Library (available on campus, remotely with ASURITE, or with an ASU Aspen Learning Library account).

Intellectual Property:  Patents, Trademarks, and Copyright in a Nutshell (Arthur R. Miller, 2018)
This text, by famed Harvard professor Arthur Miller, includes patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Further, it addresses torts and property; antitrust and government regulation; concepts of federalism and state and federal conflicts. Also on West Academic (available on campus, remotely with ASURITE, or with an ASU West Academic account).

Bloomberg Law:  IP Law News (Bloomberg Law password required)
Bloomberg Law is a renowned provider of legal news and has a section covering US intellectual property, including copyright.

Law360 Intellectual Property (available on campus or remotely with Lexis+ password)
Law360 is the legal news subdivision of LexisNexis and offers news on topics related to intellectual property and copyright.

Westlaw Intellectual Property News (Westlaw password required)
Westlaw's news sections pulls from a wide range of sources to allow the user to search and filter for terms related to trademark law.

Free Resources

United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is the federal agency that grants U.S. patents and registers trademarks. The USPTO website offers information on searching and applying for patents, registering trademarks, and about IP law and policy.

  • Patent Classification:  USPTO organizes patents through a system of classification. Until January 1, 2013, the United States Patent Classification (USPC) system was the official classification system, but this system is being replaced by the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system. The CPC is a patent classification system developed jointly by the USPTO and the European Patent Office that will be used exclusively by both organizations within a few years.
  • Multi-Step U.S. Patent Search Strategy;  The USPTO details its recommended seven-step strategy for finding patents.
  • USPTO Patent Public Search:  Replacing PatFT and AppFT, the Patent Public Search contains the full text of patents from 1976-present and TIFF images for all patents from 1790 to the present, as well as the full text of patent applications from 2001-present. The database has both a quick search and an advanced search feature.
  • Official Gazette:  The Official Gazette is the official journal of the USPTO. It is published weekly and includes bibliographic information and a representative drawing for each patent granted or trademark published on that issue date. Official Gazette notices can be browsed by year (1995-present), and a Consolidated Listing of Notices for important notices and rules changes is available for the years 1964-1998. There is a separate Official Gazette for Patents and Trademark Official Gazette, both of which are published online only. Copies of these weekly gazettes are available for the preceding year.

USPTO Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) maintains the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences website. This website provides information concerning board procedures, contact information, hearing information, patent interference, opinions, decisions, statistics, and other resources.

Google Patents
Google Patents provides online access to granted patents and published patent applications from the United States Patent and Trademark Office from 1790-present and European Patent Office from 1978-present. It offers both a basic search and advanced search.

Foreign Patents

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
The World Intellectual Property Organization is an international organization dedicated to the development and use of the international intellectual property system. The WIPO website offers a variety of resources on international intellectual property law and the systems that promote intellectual property protection.

European Patent Office (EPO)
The European Patent Office is part of the European Patent Organisation, a 38-member intergovernmental organization that grants European patents. The EPO website offers information for inventors seeking European patents and a variety of patent searching tools.

  • European Patent Register:  The European Patent Register contains all publicly available information on European patent applications as they pass through the grant procedures.
  • Espacenet:  Espacenet offers searching of more than 70 million patent documents from 1836-present in the EPO database. Patents can be searched in English, German, French, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

Westlaw EPO Patents & Applications (Westlaw password required)
This Westlaw database contains the full text of all patents granted and patent applications published by the European Patent Office since 1980. Westlaw password required.