Librarians at the STEM Library are able to answer questions about plant patents and patent research. Please contact us at stemlibs@umd.edu.
Currently, many free patent websites have black and white images. USPTO’s Patent Center has “supplemental content” links to color images for patents back to June 2008. Viewers can only access a single image at a time. USPTO warns that color images vary in quality.
Ken Johnson, New York PTRC Representative (retired 2017), scanned and indexed plant patents from April 17, 2012, through November 28, 2017. He advised that these color scans are for preliminary searching only. Please do not rely on them for final prior art or other legal searches.
Russ Allen has created an OCR search for pre-1976 plant patents.
Plant patents can be fully searched, including by names and words, through USPTO’s Patent Public Search, but only by PLT classification and PP number before 1976.
