Interesting news from Steve Van Dulken at the British Library!

Google has digitized the 1617-1852 Chronological Index for English patents, and have placed it at http://books.google.com/books?id=L7dzFhUqKD0C&dq=%22
It can be searched for within Google: I found it by accident, asking for <"John Bond" and patentee>.
The implications are huge. Using the link above, you can keyword search the entire text, looking for words like Ipswich, chemist, indiarubber and the like. Remote customers simply need to be told the link.
In addition, all the annual supplements seem to have been added as well – to 1869 at least. The source for the work is cited as the Oxford University.
In addition, the same project has indexed a lot of directories, whose advertisements can offer useful data. An example is the 1855 Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park, which can be found at http://books.google.com/books?id=L7dzFhUqKD0C&dq=%22
That book has 11 mentions of the word patentee, all or mostly within advertisements. It, too, was found with the same search given above. In reality, of course, someone would search in Google generally for such information.
Or, you could go to the website for the project, http://books.google.com/, and enter for example and find over 600 hits. Enjoy !