7. Conclusion

The conclusion of this presentation is simple: patents are becoming indispensable in the field of science and technology. If a majority of people believe that patents are only a means of protection, they are sadly mistaken, for patent databases are a source of technological information that is rarely published elsewhere.

Many people also believe that using patents as a source of information is difficult. This may have been true a few years ago, but nowadays the development of free or low-cost services makes it possible to carry out a simple but effective search without having to be a specialist. So it's good practice to include patent searching as part of an information practice. This often avoids a commitment to already protected or dead-end paths (patents in the field, but abandoned).

In this article, we have presented various databases,...