Plant Patents Color Image Database and Visualization
The Plant Patent Image Database provides an easily accessible collection of color plant patents. Plant patents have been produced since 1931 and many older patents do not have color versions readily accessible from the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) online resources. The University of Maryland Libraries is a designated Patent and Trademark Resource Center and serves as a repository for plant patents. Since 2014, a team has been scanning plant patents to create a digital collection of color images for researchers to browse and search. The database currently hosts images for over 34,000 patents and has been accessed by viewers all over the world. The team has also developed the Plant Patent Metadata Portal, a web-based visualization project. This project began in 2020 and is ongoing. The visualization features a map showing locations of plant patent origins and assignees, with additional metadata for each patent. This application is built on ESRI’s cloud application and allows users to interact with plant patent metadata to enhance data visualization. This poster reports on the history of the project and efforts to update the image database and visualization, as well as new directions for these resources. Future initiatives include a user assessment for both the database and the visualization to improve the interfaces. This poster will be of interest to librarians and researchers who wish to know more about plant patents. Audience members will learn about the project and how to access the database and visualization map as resources for plant patent research.