Rolf Claessen of IP Newsflash fame as well as patent attorney and partner with the patent law firm v. Kreisler Selting Werner in Cologne, Germany, brings us the new Free Patent PDF Download [1] tool. It’s free. It’s easy to use. It has broad coverage (espacenet database).
My only small peeve is that you need to register [2] and login [3] for downloading PDFs to avoid abuse by automated programs and I hate registering for anything. Update: Rolf Claesen wrote to say he wanted this to be the best patent PDF download tool available so he has removed the registration and login requirements.
Note, however, another great tool from IP Newsflash is the Patent Family Search [4].
John Segal sent me a note about another source for free PDF downloads of patents called the Patent Retriever [5] (admit it, you knew there’d be a picture of a dog on the site). Upside: you can download US, European and PCT patent applications as PDF files for free without having to register.
In an equal-opportunity moment, the following are also available:
- Google Patent Search [6]
- BrainDex Patent Downloader [7] (not free)
- Pat2PDF [8]
- EPC PDF Download [9]
- Patent Fetcher [10] (free but limited to 10/day)
- Patent Monkey [11]