As a Patent and Trademark Depository Library (PTDL), Atkins Library receives, stores and provides public access to copies of U.S. patents and patent and trademark materials. Atkins Library is only one of two libraries with this designation in North Carolina and is the only depository library in western North Carolina. The program is designed to facilitate the needs of individual inventors as well as business and community interests.
As a PTDL, we provide access to patent and trademark information and assistance with using search tools. We are not permitted to offer advice or opinions on the quality or completeness of a patron's search, nor are we able to suggest keywords, classifications, or other information for their specific inventions, as this could be considered unauthorized practice of law. If a patron is looking for assistance with their specific invention rather than simply with the use of the search tools, they should contact a registered patent attorney or agent (listings of currently registered attorneys and agents are available on the USPTO website).
A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. U.S. patent grants are effective only within the United States, U.S. territories, and U.S. possessions. Under certain circumstances, patent term extensions or adjustments may be available. The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, "the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling" the invention in the United States or "importing" the invention into the United States. What is granted is not the right to make, use, offer for sale, sell or import, but the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention. Once a patent is issued, the patentee must enforce the patent without aid of the USPTO.
There are three types of patents:
Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof (example: new mousetrap)
Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture (example: new toothpaste container that incorporates floss)
Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plants (example: hybrids, etc.)
The USPTO recommends that inventors follow this "Seven Step Strategy" when conducting a formal patent search as a preliminary to submitting a patent application:
Classification
Brainstorm keywords related to the purpose, use and composition of the invention.
Read the Classification Definitions to verify the scope of the subclasses and note “see also” references.
Access Full-Text
Search the Issued Patents (PatFT) and the Published Applications (AppFT) databases by “Current US Classification” and access full-text patents and published applications.
Review and References
Review the claims, specifications and drawings of documents retrieved for relevancy.
Check all references and note the “U.S. Cl.” and “Field of Search” areas for additional classes and/or subclasses to search.
Patent Search Tools
There are three official resources used to search for issued patents: the USPTO website in their public online database (PatFT), the PubWEST system at a depository library or the USPTO public search facility, and the CASSIS computer system at a Patent and Trademark Depository Library. A popular but unofficial resource is Google Patent Search. Patent applications filed since March 2001 are available via the AppFT database from the USPTO only.
The database includes information about all U.S. patents (including utility, design, reissue, and plant patents) from the first patent issued in 1790 to the most recent issue week.
Patents from January 1976 to the present offer the full searchable text, including all bibliographic data, such as the inventor's name, the patent's title, and the assignee's name, the abstract, the full description of the invention, and the claims. The display of each patent's full-text includes a hyperlink to obtain full-page images of each page of the patent.
Patents from 1790 to December 1975 offer only the patent number and the current U.S. patent classification in the text display, and can be searched only by those fields. Search results will include a hyperlink to obtain full-page images of each page of the patent.
PatFT only includes data on patents which have been issued. Patent applications filed since January 1, 2001 are available through the AppFT database.
USPTO normally updates the database every Tuesday, the day patents are issued. Exceptions may occur for Federal holidays and when problems arise with data availability. Current US classifications are normally updated every two months.
You must have a TIFF viewer installed to be able to view the patent images in this database.
CASSIS System
The Cassis database is used to search DVD-ROMS of patent information, which are provided to PTDL locations by the USPTO. It can be accessed on the Patent workstation and the Gov Docs workstations at the Atkins Library. There are four different series of discs available:
Patents CLASS: Provides all classifications of a given patent number and a list of all patent numbers in a classification
Patents BIB: Bibliographic information for utility patents issued since 1969 (other patents, since 1977), and patent application publications since March 15, 2001, including inventor, issue or publication date, title, current classifications, assignee at time of issue, status (withdrawn, reexamined, extended term, certificate of correction issued or expired due to nonpayment of maintenance fee), and abstracts since 1988.
Patents and Trademarks ASSIGN: Shows assignment of patent and trademarks rights recorded at the USPTO from August 1980 to present.
Patents ASSIST: This disc provides a variety of files: Manual of Classification; Classification Definitions; Manual of Patent Examining Procedure; Index to the U.S. Patent Classification System; Attorneys and Agents Registered to Practice before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office; Classification Orders Index showing Classes/subclasses abolished or established since 1976; IPC-USPC Concordance; Classification, Art Unit, Supervisory Patent Examiner and Telephone Number (CAST) showing which Art Units examine which art according to classification; and Patentee-Assignee File showing assignment of patent rights at time of issue since 1969 for utility patents (other patents, since 1977), and inventor names since 1975.
These are supplemented by the USAPat and USAApp discs, which contain high-quality images of all patents and applications, retrievable by document number only.
PubWEST
Searching in PubWEST allows patrons to use the same system that is used by USPTO patent examiners and professional searchers. It offers many advanced options for searching, and is the only way of searching the collections of foreign patents available at the USPTO office. It is only available at the USPTO public search facility and PTDL sites. To use PubWEST at Atkins library, patrons must make an appointment with the patent librarian in advance, as it requires an extensive login process.
Google Patent Search allows easy keyword searching of the full text of patents issued from 1790 to the past few months. It is an excellent place for new searchers to begin with keyword searching for prior art related to their invention, but it is important to follow up with the official USPTO documents, as some data in Google's index may have become outdated or may have been incorrectly scanned. In particular, it is important to get classification numbers from the USPTO site rather than Google, as these are retroactively changed at the USPTO (but not in Google) and may have errors from the scanning process. Most patent pages will include a link that says "View this patent at USPTO", which takes the user immediately to the patent record on the USPTO website. Also, Google Patents allows the user to download a PDF file of the patent image, which is significantly more user-friendly than the TIFF files used by the USPTO.
Trademarks
A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol or design, or a combination of words, phrases, symbols or designs, that identifies and distinguishes the source of the goods of one party from those of others. A service mark is the same as a trademark, except that it identifies and distinguishes the source of a service rather than a product. Throughout this booklet, the terms "trademark" and "mark" refer to both trademarks and service marks.
As with patents, PTDL employees cannot comment on the completeness or validity of trademark searches or the application process in general. USPTO employees will gladly answer questions about the application process. However, USPTO employees cannot:
conduct trademark searches for the public
comment on the validity of registered marks
answer questions on whether a particular mark or type of mark is eligible for trademark registration
offer legal advice or opinions about common law trademark rights, state registrations, or trademark infringement claims
Trademark Online Searching
TESS (Trademark Electronic Search System) contains more than 3 million pending, registered and dead federal trademarks. TESS supports the trademark application process by providing for searching the existing trademark application and registration information via an Internet browser. TESS provides access to the same text and image database of trademarks as currently provided to examining attorneys at the US Patent and Trademark Office via the X-Search system.
The date of the last update to TESS is prominently displayed on the search screens. Updates are performed prior to the start of business for the date indicated. Updates are scheduled daily on Tuesdays through Saturdays.
The fact that a mark is not present in the TESS database does not necessarily mean that the mark is not currently being used as a trademark. The TESS database contains only those trademarks that are Federally registered or that are pending (applications undergoing examination at the USPTO). The TESS database does not contain any information on state, foreign, or common law trademarks. The TESS database does include the available information on inactive applications and registrations (i.e., abandoned applications or canceled or expired registrations). Information on applications and registrations that were inactive prior to 1984, however, are generally not available on TESS.
