Looking for a patent database? Need a little Inspire-ation?

The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) have been adding a range of useful tools for many aspects of intellectual property for a while now, including searching databases for patents, trademarks and designs; classifications; statistics; and multilingual terminology across patent documents. I've written before about where you might go to conduct a search, sticking mainly to free sources, but WIPO have just introduced a new tool called WIPO Inspire that is a collection of reports on patent databases and their features.

There are only 24 databases at present but I'm sure that list will grow as new entrants establish themselves in the market. It's weighted slightly in favour of fee paying, or commercial, databases, and the free ones are currently restricted to the IP5 (the five largest intellectual property offices), but not either of PatFt or AppFT from the United States, but including WIPO's own PatentScope, and a few others such as The Lens. If you need to