UNLV has two U.S. Patent and Trademark Resource Centers. The core mission and purpose of the Patent & Trademark Resource Centers is to support the establishment of intellectual property by inventors and to increase the understanding of patents and trademarks by UNLV students.
There are also many online tools available to help you search for publicly available patent applications or granted patent documents.
The European Union's free patent search tool, Espacenet, offers free access to more than 80 million patent documents worldwide, containing information about inventions and technical developments from 1836 to today.
Searches scholarly journal articles. Set preferences to UNLV for full text access!
Google Scholar searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and reports from many academic and technical fields. It is freely available to anyone searching the Internet; however, many of the links that lead to full text resources are not. On your first visit, go to Google Scholar Preferences and use the Library Links box to set UNLV as your source for no-fee access to many full text articles. For answers to questions about Google Scholar, check out the FAQ.
Simultaneously search Google Patents and Google Scholar to locate existing documentation of inventions. Searches within the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the European Patent Office (EPO), and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as well as the materials within Google Scholar.