Google Patents May Add to Your Family History AND StLGS Members, It's Time to Vote!

We already know that many of our ancestors were hard-working and industrious. They often had to be in order to survive. A lot of our ancestors were also extremely creative as they made their way through what often was a difficult world. Not satisfied with the status quo, they looked for ways to improve their lives. A few weeks ago, we told you about a woman named Nancy Donaldson Johnson, who invented and patented an ice cream freezer in 1843. (Did you miss that post? You can find it here.) How can you learn more about your own ancestors who might have been inventors? Once again, Google is your friend. Read on to learn about one of its best-kept secrets, Google Patents. (And if you are a member of StLGS, be sure to check out the information at the end of this post; it's voting time again!)

Patents are to inventions as copyrights are to artistic endeavors. When an inventor creates something new or modifies something already in existence in a new way, he or she can apply for a patent to protect the invention from being appropriated by another person or company. According to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, a patent “gives an inventor exclusive rights to their invention.” Once an invention has been patented, no one can use it, make it, or sell it without the inventor’s permission. There are actually three types of patent: utility, the most common; design, and plant (as in new varieties of living plants). (More information at “Guide to Intellectual Property: What is a Patent?” National Inventors Hall of Fame, 2023, https://www.invent.org/blog/intellectual-property/patent-definition)

How do you know if someone has a patent?

Patents are issued by the government, so they are freely available to researchers. And where do you see them? A little known but very important part of Google, Google Patents, is one free source. According to their info files, the site currently includes more than 120 million patents from more than one hundred patent offices around the world. Most have been translated into English (but using machine translation, OCR, so no guarantees on accuracy). 

Because this site is deceptively simple, you might like to start with Google’s “About Google Patents” section that contains a series of pages with explanatory information and tips for searching. You can find it here. When you are done, you are ready to dig in to Google Patents: https://patents.google.com.

Like Google’s more familiar home page, Google Patents' home page is bare bones. There are no instructions, which is why the FAQ support pages are helpful. You can search with a patent application number, by keywords, or in a variety of other ways. If you find something, you will get all the relevant paperwork filed with that patent. However, finding a patent by inventor name is not straightforward. Let’s say you know an ancestor invented something to do with refrigerators. Start on the Google Patents home page with the keyword "refrigerators." 

Because that word is so general, it is going to bring up thousands of hits, but on the left side of the page, you can narrow down what you are looking for.  Part way down the “Search Terms” column, you will see the word “Inventor,” and that’s where you will type in your ancestor’s name. Now, the results should be a manageable number. You can further make this easier by going to the top of the results screen and clicking the tiny arrow next to “Sort by: Relevance.” Change it to “Sort by: Oldest,” which will give you the oldest patents first.

In this example, we are looking for Michael L. Simms, who worked for General Electric and helped design refrigerator doors. We find two patents for Michael, one of which shows that he patented a door that includes “an ice dispenser and crusher in a freezer compartment and an ice delivery passage through the refrigerator door for delivering ice exterior of the cabinet.” Michael’s patent, filed on 3 June 1970 with another man named Dwight W. Jacobus, says they lived and worked in Louisville, Kentucky, and includes a long description and detailed drawings of their invention. To the right of the text (but shown here below the first graphic) is a list of dates associated with the patent, and by clicking the link in the blue line at the top, you can download the application file as a PDF. 

We should also mention that Ancestry.com has United States patents available for subscribers, but their databases are limited to modern patents (1970 to 2019) and those from 1790 to 1909.  The searching process on Ancestry is a lot easier, but the results may not be as comprehensive, and there is that gap in the twentieth century. Whichever site you use, enjoy hunting for what might be very interesting facts in the lives of your ancestors!

🔷

Voting for Officers (StLGS Members Only)

Voting for the vice-president for programs and treasurer for 2024–2025 is now open on the StLGS website. You will find a button on the home page that will take you to a page with photos and bios of Donna Foelsch, who is running for vice-president for programs, and Michelle Pearce, running for a second term as treasurer. Be sure you log in first, and then click the link on the voting page to access a ballot. It shouldn’t take you more than a minute or two, and Donna and Michelle will appreciate your support. Voting will remain open until the end of October.