U.S. and international patent disclosures are readily available for searching and viewing to serve as possible technical resources for training students in applied chemical engineering subjects. In the past, professors have been justifiably reluctant to make use of patents as technical resources because finding relevant patents was time-consuming and expensive.

Patent publications should no longer be treated as solely the realm of attorneys. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and governments worldwide have done a commendable and remarkably unbureaucratic job of making current and recent patent data available on the Internet. The search options are extensive and the data readily available in the form of full-text and figures.

The available patent databases include archives of published international patent applications. Published applications are generally available 18 months after the application filing date, long before a corresponding U.S. Patent would issue on the same technology. Published patent applications represent a low-cost method for looking into practical applications of chemical engineering.

The paper presents a survey of patent data and databases available worldwide (including scope of coverage), provides effective search strategies for making the best use of these databases, discusses how and when patent disclosures should be available online, and offers proposed lesson schedules for presenting patents to students as both a technical reference and a tool for entrepreneurs.