Patent Resources: Information Resources for Patents & IP

Online events from the U.S. Patent & Trademarks Office.

Invention-Con is the USPTO's annual conference for independent inventors, entrepreneurs, and small business owners whose success depends on guarding their creative work.

The World Intellectual Property Organization provides a varied portfolio of courses on Intellectual Property that caters to a wide collection of target audiences: inventors and creators, business managers and IP professionals, policy makers and government officials of Intellectual Property institutions, diplomats, students and teachers of intellectual property and civil society at large.

World Patent Information aims to encompass the world of IP information; and focus the journal towards IPRs for industrially applicable innovations; and their management, analysis; big data analysis; policy; education. IPRs - patents, utility models; copyright, trademarks, registered design; design rights; trade secrets; database rights; traditional knowledge; indigenous knowledge; geographical indications may all be considered.

The mission of the PIUG, the International Society for Patent Information Professionals, is to support, assist, improve and enhance the success of patent information professionals through leadership, education, communication, advocacy and networking. The member of their Education Committee are professional searchers and trainers with decades of patent information experience. Their training library contains courses that provide the basics of patent law, patent information resources, search techniques, patent analytics, and best practices for searching patent information, as well as more specialized classes on specific topics.

A committee of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) Private Law Librarians & Information Professionals-Special Interest Section (PLLIP-SIS), the Intellectual Property Committee is a community of librarians who support IP practices or have an interest in patent, trademark and copyright issues. Since its founding, the Intellectual Property group has provided education, collaboration and networking opportunities for AALL members, from the most experienced IP researcher to the newer librarian.

A newsletter with three summaries of new patents from the biggest tech companies every week -- nice and chatty, with links to other items that may also be of interest.

The Intellectual Property section of Law360, a site that covers (with one- to two-sentence summaries of the article contents) litigation, policy developments, corporate deals, and more across dozens of practice areas, industries, and jurisdictions. Full-text access to the articles is provided upon log-in to the site.

A patent weblog authored by Dennis Crouch
(Associate Professor, University of Missouri School of Law) and Jason Rantanen (Professor, University of Iowa College of Law), with occasional guest posts by IP practitioners and academics. The site also links to its own patent law journal, to allow for the publication of longer articles that the authors feel are of value.

IPWatchdog bills itself as one of the leading sources for news, information, analysis and commentary in the patent and innovation industries, and was recognized as one of the top 100 legal blogs by the American Bar Association for 5 years in a row.