Important Notices concerning the Patent Full-Text and Full-Page Image Databases

• These databases are intended for use by the general public. Due to limitations of equipment and bandwidth, they are not intended to be a source for bulk downloads of USPTO data. Bulk data may be purchased from USPTO at cost (see the USPTO Products and Services Catalog). Individuals, companies, IP addresses, or blocks of IP addresses who, in effect, deny service to the general public by generating unusually high numbers (1000 or more) of daily database accesses (searches, pages, or hits), whether generated manually or in an automated fashion, may be denied access to these servers without notice.
  
  
• Users creating their own hyperlinks to pages on this site are requested and cautioned to do so in a manner which maintains a clear distinction between the user's content and official content published by USPTO. Users packaging pages from this Web site hyperlinked within frames are requested and cautioned to properly identify USPTO-provided content. Users formulating or constructing their own search or query URLs in attempting to bypass the database query parsers and directly access the database search engines or documents will be permanently denied access to the database without notice, as such efforts may lead to incorrectly formulated queries which may jeopardize proper operation of the database servers. Please see the status note on linking directly to a particular patent
  
  
• Patents issued from 1790 through 1975 are searchable only by patent number and current US classifications. Attempts to search those patents by any other fields will result in an error message.
  
  
• US Patent Classification data in the Full-Text Database (Current US Classification [CCL]) is frequently updated to reflect the most current PTO Master Classification File (MCF), and will not necessarily match the classification data which appears on the patent full-page images (i.e., the printed patent) or on the Patent Classification pages.
  
  
• The Issued Patents Full-Text Database is a database of patent full-text as it was printed on the patent on the day of issue. Changes to patent documents contained in Certificates of Correction and Re-examinations Certificates are not included in the searchable full-text of the patent databases, but are available as additional full-page images at the end of each patent's linked full-page images.
  
  
• Neither assignment changes nor address changes recorded at the USPTO are reflected in the patent full-text or the patent full-page images.
  
  
• These databases have limited resources, both bandwidth and computer systems. Therefor, to assure availability to the general public, searches are limited in terms of both the length of the query and the amount of computer time available for any single search. In particular, if the fully-expanded parsed query, which can be viewed by looking at a resulting hit-list link using your browser's Right-click -Properties capability, exceeds 256 characters in length, the query may be rejected by the parser, may time out before completion, or may produce invalid results even though it appears to have worked correctly.
  
  
• The fact that an invention cannot be found by searching in the Patent Full-Text Database does not mean that the invention is patentable. The USPTO's text-searchable patent database begins with patents granted since 1976. A complete patentability search must consider all prior art, including earlier patents, foreign patents and non-patent literature.
  
  
• Please note that USPTO does not record or log the parameters of search requests submitted to these databases. Such uncollected information has thus never been disclosed through sale or FOIA request, intentionally or otherwise, to any third party. USPTO does not plan to change this operational policy.