World’s Largest Patent Database Now Online

Today it was announces that the world’s
largest patent database has been published online by FIZ Karlsruhe , a German organization that specializes in providing information on science and technology.

According to today’s news release by CORDIS, the European Union’s news agency:

More than 63 million patent documents from 80 patent organizations worldwide can be searched via the International Patent Documentation Data Base,
(INPADOCDB). It was created by merging and revising two existing databases of
the European Patent Office (EPO).

The database includes patent documents and utility models from the most important industrialized countries, dating back as far as the 19th century in the cases of France,  Germany, the UK and the US, and 1944 in the case of Japan.

Visitors to the database can obtain a whole host of information on any
one patent, including bibliographical information, patent family information,
patent classification, and legal status data. Most documents contain abstracts
in English, providing quick information on the described invention for which a
patent has been filed.

For innovators that monitor technology trends, this is a welcoming dose of accessible and reliable patent information.