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Intellectual Property

Copyright, Patent, Trademark, and Trade Secrets

Subscription Resources

Westlaw: Intellectual Property - Patents (Westlaw password required)
Westlaw hosts a suite of materials for patent researchers 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/”standard” documents and clauses with drafting notes, practitioner-written articles, and legal updates.

U.S. Patents and Applications - this Westlaw database contains patent applications from March, 2011-present, granted patents from 1976-present, and patent assignments from 1980-present. Westlaw password required.

Lexis: Patent Law (Lexis password required)
The Lexis Patent Law suite provides a clear list of helpful topics for patent law researchers.  Contents are organized in a browseable hierarchy.

Lexis Practice Advisor: Patents (Lexis password required)
Lexis Practice Advisor contains resources focused on patent law including annotated forms, practitioner insights, and drafting guidance.  Resources are organized by eleven practice areas.

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

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

U.S. Patent Search (Bloomberg 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 patent law.  You can search for other resources in the ASU Library catalog by using subject headings such as: Intellectual property - United States; and Patent laws and legislation - United States.

Chisum on Patents: A Treatise on the Law of Patentability, Validity, and Infringement (Chisum, Donald S., 1944+)
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. Chisum on Patents is also available electronically through 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, current) 
This free website provides Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, consolidated laws and rules, and archived manuals.

Examples and Explanations: Intellectual Property (McJohn, Stephen M., 2021)
Available in print in the library and digitally on Aspen Learning Library (password required).
Using Examples & Explanations pedagogy, this study guide covers the core concepts of intellectual property law: copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secrets.

Intellectual Property: Patents, Trademarks, and Copyright in a Nutshell (Miller, Arthur R., 2018)
Available in print in the library and digitally on West Academic study aids (password required).
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.

Bloomberg Law’s IP Law News (Bloomberg Law password required)
Intellectual property news content from Bloomberg Law.

Law360 IP News (Lexis password required)
Intellectual property news articles from Law360.com.

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 patent 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.  
  • Seven Step Strategy for Finding Patents 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 and 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.

WIPO Directory of Intellectual Property Offices
This website lists international intellectual property offices alphabetically by country. Many countries offer free online access to patent collections in English and provide searchable databases. Below is a select list of English-language websites and searchable patent databases: