Newsletter
It isn’t unusual for interested people and organizations to search for various disruptive technologies that have been patented but have stayed away from the public eye because they weren’t commercialized, like Google’s recent patent on augmented reality inside a physical book. A large number of developers and innovators in various fields and from every country win new patents for their inventions but there are very few avenues for laymen to get to know about them. But things are slowly changing. Google today announced that Google Patents, a subsidiary which accumulates millions of published patents in a single database, is now available in 11 more countries, which includes Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Belgium, Russia, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, and Luxembourg. Google Patents now features 41 million new patents from these regions and covers as many as 17 patent offices worldwide.
For someone living in the United States, it might be natural to think that this means nothing because people from these regions may not submit their patents in the English language. To ensure that the language barrier doesn’t get in the way, Google has painstakingly translated all published patents and applications from these countries so that someone who speaks English can search for patents using English keywords. Apart from keeping the general public informed, Google Patents also aims to help inventors via advanced search results so that they can double-check that the technologies they are claiming patents for aren’t already in existence. At the same time, patent examiners will also be able to cross-check on the platform before granting patents on various fields to applicants.
Even though Google Patents is a huge database which may grow even larger with the addition of new regions in the future, patents and applications aren’t the only things that you’ll find in the database. You will also be able to search for and access a number of scholastic books and scientific papers through which you will be able to enhance your knowledge and expertise on certain fields. Aside from Google Patents, there is another tool named PatentIQ using which Google’s legal teams are able to view as many as 100 million patents from a number of countries including Japan, Germany, Russia, South Korea and India. Thanks to this database, innovators at Google stay abreast of existing patents and can thus make informed decisions while working on new technologies and applying for new patents, which is a great way to stay away from expensive patent litigation in the future.