AN INVESTIGATION ON THE USAGE OF THE PATENT SEARCH ENGINES

Patent documents are very valuable scientific resources. They store recent and detailed technical knowledge in all technological fields. While the importance of the patent rights is understood better day by day, the number of the patent application is increasing all over the World. This leads technical information stored in patent databases to grow rapidly. The valuable information stored in patent documents can be accessible not only to the people related with patent world but also to everyone taking part in science and technology. In this study, the use of several free of charge patent search engine is investigated. Then, it is revealed that the world of science is not able to benefit from the patent databases as required level and the underlying reasons for this are discussed. After stating that developing more powerful patent search engines in a user friendly manner will be beneficial in terms of overcoming this problem, a new patent search engine design is also explained