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Patents

University of Queensland Library guide on finding scientific and technical information in patents.

What is a patent?

A patent is a contract between the government and an inventor/s by which a legal right to the invention is granted in return for disclosing all details of the invention. For researchers, patents are an important source of scientific and technical information. Patents are often the earliest source of information on a new technology.

Patent databases

To determine if a patent exists you may wish to search the following free and UQ Library subscribed databases to discover prior art in an area: