Physics

Standard Development Life Cycle (source IEEE Standard Association website)

"A prescribed set of rules, conditions, or requirements concerning definitions of terms; classification of components; specification of materials, performance, or operations; delineation of procedures; or measurement of quantity and quality in describing materials, products, systems, services, or practices."

- National Standards Policy Advisory Committee

"A standard is a document that provides requirements, specifications, guidelines or characteristics that can be used consistently to ensure that materials, products, processes and services are fit for their purpose."
- International Organization for Standardization (ISO)

USPTO site provides a variety of useful patent information including information about the patent process for inventors.

Patent classifications:

• International Patent Classification (IPC) - Used by the patent offices worldwide
• Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) - an extension of the IPC and is jointly managed by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the USPTO.

Major types of patents:

1. Utility Patents - "granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or compositions of matters, or any new useful improvement thereof"
2. Design Patents- "granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture"
3. Plant Patents - "granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant"

Free online access to patent collections is provided by many countries.

• Espacenet - offers free access to more than 80 million patent documents worldwide, containing information about inventions and technical developments from 1836 to today.
• EPO - Asian Patent information - Provides useful Asian patent information including patent trends, updates and other useful links. Countries covered: China, Chinese Taipet, India, Japan, Korea, and Saudi Arabia
• Japan Patent Office (JPO) – Provided by the Industrial Property Digital Library; Searching PAJ English abstracts on the JPO's IPDL
• Korean Intellectual Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS) Patent search
• SIPO search site.- the patent search site of the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People’s Republic of China and their official

Stopfakes.Gov provides informative Toolkits that give an overview of the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) environment in various countries around the world.

PATENTSCOPE ® Search Service provided by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO); Can search 30 million patent documents including 2.2 million published international patent applications; provides a list of international patent databases.