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Technical sciences: Standards and patents

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Standards are watermarked with the name of the university they are licensed to. Standards are protected by copyright and may only be used for activities internal to the university. Standards or copies of them may not be distributed outside of the university, e.g. to companies involved in thesis projects.

Other libraries

Finnish Standards Association (SFS) maintains a library at its premises in central Helsinki at Malminkatu 34. Information service and library are open daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

 

 

 

Standards

Standardisation refers to the formulation of uniform rules for the use of authorities, business, industries and the public. Even though a standard is often only a recommendation, following certain standards stated in regulations by authorities is generally mandatory. Standards are used during studies in e.g. assignments in technical sciences as they summarise important methods and product features. The governing body for standardisation in Finland is the Finnish Standards Association (SFS) that approves and publishes national SFS standards.

The European Standard (EN) must be given the status of national standard in all the member countries who also have an obligation to withdraw any national standards that would conflict with it. European standardisation operates in association with global standardisation managed by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission). The standards of different countries and organisations can be distinguished by their standard number. The standard number consists of a letter abbreviation of the publishing organisation in question, followed by a number. The letter abbreviation is often the same as the abbreviation of the standardising organisation. For example, the abbreviation SFS 3655 refers to the Finnish standard. SFS-EN 60947-5-1 refers to the European standard EN 60947-5-1 (1992) that has been given the status of national standard in Finland.

Standards in the Aalto University collections

You can access all the information resources on standards available in the Aalto University collections via Aalto-Primo.

For example the following standards are available in electronic form:

In addition, the Finnish Standards Association website provides a lot of useful information of the resources available in the field.

 

SFS standards

SFS Online service contains all SFS standards. As Aalto University user, you can search the standards using search box on the right.

You can find the SFS Online in Aalto-Primo with a keyword SFS.

Patents

Patents are an important resource for technical information because the information they contain is not necessarily published in any other forums such as scientific articles or conference presentations. Patents can also be used as information resources for e.g. product development to avoid overlapping research or to get an idea of the development trends in the field for business purposes. (NBPR & VTT 2005, 5) Patents in Finland are granted by the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland (abbreviated as NBPR). Students and personnel of Aalto University can use Aalto-Primo off-campus by logging in with their personal Aalto IT identifier.

  • Espacenet is an open access service that consists of a universal patent database as well as national databases. The universal database is a useful tool for most information retrieval on patents. The Espacenet service is managed by the European Patent Office and contains information since the 1920s.
  • PatInfo is a database managed by the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland (NBPR) that contains all the Finnish patent applications since 1960. PatInfo is openly accessible online. For more information about patents, please see the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland website.

Patent information can be used e.g. as information resources for:

  • product development to avoid doing overlapping research
  • business to understand your competitors and the research and development trends in your own field (PRH & VTT 2005, 5)

Standard databases

Standardit

Patent databases

Patentit