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  Home > JCE Print > Journal of Chemical Education > Issues > 2008  > July  >
On the Web
Chemical Information Instructor
Teaching Chemistry Students How To Use Patent Databases and Glean Patent Information
Margy MacMillan
Library, Mount Royal College, Calgary, AB, T3E 6K6, Canada

Lawton Shaw
Centre for Science, Athabasca University, AB, T9S 3A3, Canada

Cover
July 2008
Vol. 85 No. 7
p. 997
Abstract
Patent literature is an important source of chemical information that is often neglected by chemical educators. This paper describes an effort to teach chemistry students how to use patent databases to search for information on applied chemical technology related to the manufacture of industrial and specialty chemicals. Students in a second-year-level organic chemistry class were shown how to search patent literature as part of a group research paper assignment that involved determining the feasibility of starting an industrial chemical operation to manufacture a given industrial chemical. Students who were assigned high value or specialty chemicals were most likely to cite patent literature in their final papers. Students who were assigned plastics or bulk commodity chemicals were less likely to cite patents. It is suggested that students made choices about the usefulness of patent literature and that patents were most useful when current patents existed and provided the patent owner a competitive advantage. For plastics or commodity chemicals, manufacturing technologies tend to be mature and are well described by more accessible information sources. Suggestions are made for effective introduction of patent literature instruction into upper-level chemistry courses.
More Information
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Citation
MacMillan, Margy; Shaw, Lawton. J. Chem. Educ. 2008, 85, 997.
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Keywords
Chemical Education Research; Chemoinformatics; Drugs / Pharmaceuticals; Industrial Chemistry; Internet / Web-Based Learning; Organic Chemistry; Second-Year Undergraduate; Upper-Division Undergraduate
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History
Created:
Last Updated:
5/27/2008
6/4/2008
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