Patents - Fundamentals of Industrial Chemistry: Pharmaceuticals, Polymers, and Business - page 42

abandoned and the inventor can lose his right to patent protection. Another
risk is that a competitor will obtain patent protection for your trade secret
and you will be barred from practicing the invention.
Issued patents are available on the USPTO website ( http://www.uspto.gov)
and patents issued after 1976 can be easily searched by inventor, assignee, or
subject. Once on the website, click on “search for patents” and then “quick
search.” For example, a quick search of patents issued since 1976 reveals
more than 40 issued patents with the inventor name, Einstein (not the Nobel
Prize winning physicist), more than 3,800 patents with Pfizer as an assignee,
and more than 500 with the concept, “chiral alcohol.” Searching the patent
literature is a valuable tool. It provides the reader with a synopsis of the art,
with references, and best methods. Patents typically give experimental results.
They are also a good way to understand the research direction and focus of a
company because most companies patent their important results.
Often a patent search is an iterative process. For example, if I were
interested in aziridine chemistry, I could search under the term aziridine. If
I search on the U.S. Patent Office website as a quick search in patents issued
since 1976, where the term aziridine is present in any field, the search shows
more than 8,000 patents. This is too many and I need to refine the search. I can
browse some of the 8,000 patents for ideas on other terms to use to limit my
search. Another option is to refine the search to only show patents that have
the term aziridine in a certain field such as the title, abstract, or experimental.
If I refine it to include only those patents that have the term aziridine in the
abstract, I now have 276 patents. If you repeat this, you may have slightly
more because more patents may issue after the date of my search. I can
browse these or refine further. If my interest is aziridine compounds used for
control of diabetes, I can refine the search to include patents with aziridine
in the abstract and the term diabetes anywhere in the patent. I now have a
very manageable 14 patents. Within each of these patents, I can do further
searching. For example, one of the 14 patents is U.S. Pat. No. 4,652,659,
entitled, “Aziridine and phenethanolamine derivatives having antiobesity
and anti-hyperglycemic activity.” If I click on that patent, I get the text of
the patent including a list of references. The references that are U.S. patents
are hyperlinked and can be read merely by clicking on them. There is also a
hyperlink entitled, “Referenced By.” Clicking on that link reveals 18 subse-
quent U.S. patents that referenced U.S. Pat. No. 4,652,659. Viewing a patent
on the U.S. Patent Office's website can be difficult especially the display of
chemical structures; you may have to switch to image view. Another option
is to find a pdf of a patent on another website such as Google. The pdf is
easy to download and read and the chemical structures easily viewed.
The data can be searched by assignee. I might do this because I have a
particular interest in a company. Maybe they are a competitor or I have an