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Engineering: Standards & Patents

Library guide to information and resources for Engineering

ASTM Standards

British Standards

Standards and Patents

Standards are codes of best practice containing technical specifications and guidelines.

ASTM Standards 
University of Liverpool students and staff have access to the full text of ASTM Standards via ASTM Compass.  

British Standards and ISO Standards
University of Liverpool students and staff have access to the full text of British Standards via British Standards Online
BSI have introduced additional security for downloading PDFs from the BSOL platform. Users need to install FileOpen on their device. If you are using an MWS device, the FileOpen Plugin for Acrobat is available from Install University Applications.  Instructions for downloading File Open from BSI.

IEEE Standards
University of Liverpool students and staff have access to the full text of IEEE Standards via IEEE Xplore

If an international standard (ISO) has a direct British standard equivalent, it will be accessible via British Standards Online.  Other foreign standards are more difficult to track down: some Websites are listed on the next tab. If you need a foreign standard, we may be able to source it from another library: request it via Get It For Me

Patents are granted by a government for a novel invention for a limited period of time. The patent gives the creator of an invention exclusive rights to make, use and sell that invention for a set period of time. It also prevents others from making, using or selling the invention without express permission from the patent holder.

Patents are tricky to search as their language is often deliberately opaque. 

As a first choice, search Espacenet from the European Patent Office (EPO).

Other patent Websites are listed on the next tab.

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