BUSN - Entrepreneurship & Small Business
Resources on starting and running a business; for resources specific to aboriginal business, view our Aboriginal Economic Development guide.
What is a Patent?
A patent is granted by a government agency and gives the inventor the right to exclude others from making, using or selling the invention from the 
day the patent is granted to a maximum of 20 years after the day on which a patent application was filed. To find out more about patents refer to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) or the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) web sites.
Why Use Patents?
- Patents and Patent Applications often contain the first disclosure of a new technology or process.
- Patents are an underutilized source of scientific and commercial information linking scientific theory with "real world" applications.
- Patents contain diagrams and descriptions of how things work.
- Approximately two-thirds of the information disclosed in patents is not published elsewhere according to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
Find Patents
- Canadian Patent DatabaseFull patent description and patent images from August 1978 to present.
- United States Patent and Trademark OfficeFull text coverage from 1976, 1790-1975 is searchable by patent number and classification only.
- European Patent OfficeFree access to the database of over 90 million patents
- Japanese Patent OfficeJapanese patents from 1922 to present
- Google PatentsGoogle Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO—from patents issued in the 1790s to current.
- FreepatentsonlineFulltext and images of US patents beginning with patent number 4,000,000.
- Patent2pdf.orgDownload and print PDF images of US patents-patent number(s) required