U.S. Patents
GameCatalog.org includes information on over 160 U.S. game patents.
U.S. Patents are categorized using a classification scheme. In 2013, the U.S. adopted the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system as its primary taxonomy for classifying patents. Prior to that time, the U.S. used the U.S. Patent Classification system.
In the CPC system, games are generally classified under the following major class of utility patents:
- Class A63F: Card, Board, or Roulette Games; Indoor Games Using Small Moving Bodies; Video Games; Games not otherwise provided for
In the prior U.S. Classification scheme, games are generally classified under the following major classes of utility patents:
- Class 273: Amusement Devices: Games (manual)
- Class 463: Amusement Devices: Games (electronic)
- Class 473: Games Using Tangible Projectile (including Billiards & Pool, Bowling, Golf, Croquet, Hopscotch, etc.)
The U.S. also issues design patents to protect the unique appearance of an item. Games generally fall within the following design patent class:
Games may also be found in other classes and subclasses, or cross-indexed with multiple classifications.
U.S. Patent Resources Online
- U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Presentation on Patents and Patent Searching at 2022 AGPI convention by patent examiners David Duffy and Julie Brocketti on 13 May.
- Google Patent Search. Search the text of all US patents since 1790, and retrieve matching patent images.
- U.S. patents. All U.S. patents are online at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. However, only images are available for most patents from 1790 to 1975. Patent images are provided in .PDF format. Searching of the patent text is available for patents since 1975. Searches before 1975 can only be performed on Issue Date, Patent Number, and Current Classification.
- Free Patents Online includes PDFs of all U.S. patents, and recent European patents.
U.K. Patent Resources Online
- Early patents at the British Library
- Registered designs at The National Archives at Kew
- Great Britain’s The Patent Office
Worldwide Patent Resources Online
- The European Patent Office‘s Espacenet contains patents for over 130 million patents worldwide (including the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada), including complete coverage for some countries. Text in all patents can be searched (though many early ones only have text produced through optical character recognition which isn’t always accurate). In addition, the text in patents can be translated to a variety of languages. Cross-references are provided for the same or quite similar patent granted in multiple countries.