How cool is this? Now search from over 7 million Patents with Google, from airplanes to edible underwear

With Google Patent Search, you can now search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you

Google continues its quest to make the world...and its wealth of information searchable and accessible to the masses. Another cool beta that caught my eye today is the Google Patent Search engine, which allows users to search from over 7 million patents in the US. This promises to be a great tool...and even a pasttime if one is bored! Check out the FAQ here: http://www.google.com/googlepatents/about.html. Some excerpts:

Q. Where does this patent data come from?
A. All patents available through Google Patent Search come from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Patents issued in the United States are public domain government information, and images of the entire database of U.S. patents are readily available online via the USPTO website.

Q. How does it work?
A. Using the same technology that powers Google Book Search, Google has converted the entire image database of U.S. patents into a format that’s easy to search. You can search the full text of U.S. patents from the Google Patent Search homepage, or visit the Advanced Patent Search page to search by criteria like patent number, inventor, and filing date.

From Airplanes....

Airplane patent found on Google Patent Search Beta