Google Patents - some issues and what it does not cover
With the new Google Patent Search tool, one can search across more than 7 million patents. Each Google Patent Search result represents an individual patent. Click on the patent image to access full patent. It displays results based on their relevance to the specific search terms entered. One can also see number of details about each patent in the list of results. These include: patent title, U.S. patent number, filing date, assignee name, patent snippet, patent summary, claims, and drawings. 'Search within this patent' option is available to search the text of an individual patent for specific keywords and phrases. it also lists other patents that were cited by the patent described on the page and lists other patents that reference the patent described on the page.
Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO - from patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006. It does not currently include patent applications, international patents, or U.S. patents issued over the last few months, but we look forward to expanding our coverage in the future
See About Google Patents for more information.
See Google Launches Google Patents, Full-Text US Patent Searching for comparison between the USPTO search and the Google search of the number of documents that show up for each year in a ten year period for the use of the word. See also Resourceshelf site to learn more about what Google Patents does not cover.
