Google Patent takes on LexisNexis & West?

Official Google Blog: Now you can search for U.S. patents

We’ve all heard about the Wright brothers, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell — famous inventors whose creative minds changed the course of history. But there are many more like them, and millions of inventions that have been patented in the U.S. alone — from useful everyday items such as adhesive tape and contact lenses to, er, things useful in specific situations, like this shark protector suit or this amusement device incorporating simulated cheese and mice.

Today, we’re excited to be releasing the beta version of Google Patent Search, which makes it easy to search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you. Start your exploration at www.google.com/patents or visit the Advanced Patent Search page to search by criteria, including patent number, inventor, and filing date. You can view images of original patents online.

Google Patent Search uses much of the same technology that powers Google Book Search, so you can scroll through pages and zoom in on text and illustrations just like you can with books.

It’s a natural extension of our mission to make this public domain government information more easily accessible using Google’s search technology. We’re pleased to have started with over 7 million patents granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and look forward to expanding our coverage over time.

Update: Removed mention of saving and printing as we’re still working on that.

It will be a while before Google matches all the functionality and content that LexisNexis and West have available, but this is a bad sign for the database giants …

Technorati Tags: LexisNexis, West Publishing, Google

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