LibGuides: Computing and Games Design: Standards & patents

Standards

Standards are documents that establish a common technical specification, so products and processes can work safely, reliably and consistently.

British Standards Online This link opens in a new window
From 19th December 2020, British Standards Online will require you to install a plug-in to read it standards. We will provide further details as we learn more.
PDF copies of virtually all current standards produced by the British Standards Institution with technical specifications covering products, processes and practices for all areas of engineering, industry, food and work, as well as standardised glossaries of terms..
British standards are only applicable in the UK: however, some British standards have been adopted from standards produced by international bodies, such as ISO or CEN. Such standards will be indicated in their standard number - in the case of the previous example, BS ISO and BS EN respectively - and will be applicable outside the UK in the countries which belong to those bodies. Please note that the database can be searched either by standard number or by keyword, but not both: so if your search fails the first time, make sure that the right box is ticked under the search box.
ASTM Compass This link opens in a new window
Full-text PDFs of active and historical engineering, construction and materials-testing standards from the ASTM, Peer-reviewed journals, conference papers and books including their Special Technical Papers.
You can also search withdrawn standards or work items (standards in development) but full text may not always be available.
Material from this database is also accessible via Library Search

International Telecommunications Union Publications
The ITU Electronic Bookshop provides ITU-R and IRU-T standards on radio and telecommunications. Three standards can be downloaded free of charge if you register.

Patents

A patent is a licence from a government which gives an inventor exclusive rights to create, sell or use an invention they have developed for a period of time. They are excellent sources of technical data on how products and processes work.

esp@cenet
esp@cenet features databases of patent applications and grants from around the world, including the European Patent Office and GB esp@cenet, the UK patent database.

The worldwide database allows you to search patents from over 70 countries, with tens of millions of international patents available. The date to which coverage of patent goes back to depend varies with each each national database.
To conduct a general search for only GB documents please insert GB into the publication number field and either the year or publication date into the publication date field.
US Patent Full-text and Image Database
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) runs a database of US patents issued since 1790, with a separate database of US patent applications since 2001.

The complete text of patents from 1976 onwards can be searched, while only the bibliographical data of older patents can be searched.
Full-page images are available for all patents on the database for free.
The USPTO website also provides access to TESS, the US trademark database.
UK Intellectual Property Office
The Intellectual Property Office is the government organisation in charge of managing patents, copyright, trademarks and designs in the UK.

Information is available about these different types of intellectual property, with facilities to search trademarks, designs and- to a limited extent- patents. There is a link to esp@cenet to search for patents in more detail.

Computing and Games Design

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