The Patent Search technology owned by Google was improved with a pretty useful function that allows users to download a certain patent in PDF format. Until you, you were able to view a patent only on the search results page without having the possibility to download and view it in offline mode. As blogger Ionut Alex reported, "the option is available from the overview page and in the sidebar, when you browse the patent." Google Patent Search was quite an anonymous technology as the Mountain View company didn't promote it too often. Although some of the users are claiming that the technology is quite useless and provides irrelevant results, Google Patent Search is a simple way to search the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

"All patents available through Google Patent Search come from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Patents issued in the United States are public domain government information, and images of the entire database of U.S. patents are readily available online via the USPTO website," Google describes its search technology. "Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO-from patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006. We don't currently include patent applications, international patents, or U.S. patents issued over the last few months, but we look forward to expanding our coverage in the future."

As you might know, the PDF format caused a lot of trouble for the giant companies from all around the world. Take the example of Microsoft, the Redmond company that planned to integrate this extension into the latest release of Office. After its attempts were useless because the legal matters prohibited this implementation, Microsoft decided to create a separate tool to add interoperability between the Office suite and the PDF format.

However, if you want to view the patents downloaded from Google in PDF format, you need a special PDF viewer. If you don't have one, you can take it from Softpedia.