Legal Research

Class 705 Reorganized

Posted on November 09, 2009
The USPTO has abolished subclass 14 in Class 705 and replaced it with three dozen subclasses, 14.1 through 14.73. The changes are contained in Classification Order #1888, which was published on Sept. 1, 2009. Established in 1997, Class 705 covers patents relating to Data Processing: Financial, Business Practice, Management or Cost/Price Determination...

Class 89 Expanded: Cross-Reference Art Collection Subclasses

Posted on November 09, 2009
Just in time for Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the U.S.), the USPTO has added a series of cross-reference art collection subclasses (901-939) to Class 89, Ordnance. The changes are outlined in Classification Order #1889, which was published on October 6...

Patent Info News Supplement / EPO Discontinues DVD Products

Posted on October 27, 2009
The EPO is now publishing a supplement with its Patent Information News newsletter that covers data and technical topics formerly covered in the INPADOC Patent News. e.g. Legal status codes, country coverage, etc. The first issue contains a nice overview of patent procedure in the U...

Patented Gas Mask Bra Wins Ig Nobel Award

Posted on October 02, 2009
Dr. Elena Bodnar of Chicago has received an Ig Nobel Award for her design of a bra that converts into a pair of gas masks. Dr. Bodnar was granted US patent 7,255,627 B2 on Aug. 14, 2007.

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US Patent Counts, Q3 2009

Posted on September 29, 2009
The USPTO issued 47,042 patents in Q3, a decline of 3.2 percent from the previous quarter and the lowest total this year. The number of published applications was also down slightly, dropping to 76,040 from 81,288 in Q2. Despite this slowdown the USPTO is still on track to exceed last year's total of 312,854 published applications...

Patent Map from FreePatentsOnline

Posted on September 24, 2009
FreePatentsOnline has launched a new patent mapping service called Local Patents. The service combines inventor and assignee city data from 3 million US patents and published applications with a map of the US generated by Google Maps. It's very cool. You can drill down from the state level to city/town...

Design Patent #600,000

Posted on September 16, 2009
Design patent no. 600,000 was issued this week to Goal Zero of Spanish Fork, Utah. The patent protects the design of a battery system.

Robotic Fish Farms

Posted on August 21, 2009
Fish farming is under attack from environmentalists who claim that it pollutes bays and inlets and spreads infectious diseases like salmon anaemia. The main problem is that cages used in most fish farms are fixed in place, which concentrates fish waste and uneaten food on the sea floor...

Underwater Logging

Posted on August 21, 2009
A story in the Globe and Mail this week reported on a project to harvest dead trees, including valuable teak and mahogany, from a man-made lake in Ghana. The total value of the wood is estimated at up to $3 billion. This isn't the first time that entrepreneurs have proposed recovering wood from the bottom of lakes and rivers...

New Leadership at the USPTO

Posted on August 16, 2009
The USPTO has a new leader. On Thursday, August 13, David Kappos was sworn in as the Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He's the 52nd person to hold that position since it was established in 1836...

"Investing in patents is no country for old men."

Posted on August 14, 2009
... That's the message one pundit sees in this week's patent infringement ruling against Microsoft. The article makes some interesting points about the cost of litigating a patent lawsuit and speculates on why Microsoft (or any high tech company) might chance a lawsuit rather than license a new and unproven technology...

Patent Ruling Against Microsoft

Posted on August 13, 2009
The big news today is the patent dispute between software leviathan Microsoft and i4i, a small (30 employees) Toronto-based software developer. Two years ago i4i sued Microsoft for using its patented technology in Microsoft Word. Yesterday, a judge in Texas overseeing the case ordered Microsoft to stop selling Word in sixty days...

Les Paul, 1915-2009

Posted on August 13, 2009
World-renowned musician Les Paul, whose invention of the solid-body electric guitar transformed popular music in the 1950s and 60s, died today at the age of 94. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005.Mr. Paul held at least two patents related to electric guitars...

US Assignment Data in espacenet

Posted on August 12, 2009
The June issue of Patent Information News states that the EPO is in the process of reloading US assignment records into its legal status database. When the project is finished US patents in esp@cenet will be linked to more than six million assignments dating back to 1981...

Class 310 Reorganized

Posted on August 06, 2009
The USPTO has reorganized Class 310: Electrical Generator or Motor Structure. Details are provided in Classification Order #1887. Class 310, which was created in 1953, is a bit atypical in that it is a residual class intended to cover technology related to electrical generator or motor structure not classified elsewhere...

Nortel's Patent Plum

Posted on August 06, 2009
Nortel Networks, one of Canada's leading telecommunication technology companies during the 20th century, is bankrupt and in the process of selling off its assets, including its hefty portfolio of thousands of patents and other intellectual property. This week a high profile spat broke out between two rival bidders, Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, and mobile phone giant Ericsson...

One Giant Step for Mankind? Moon Ads?

Posted on August 05, 2009
While the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of the first manned-mission to the moon, an entrepreneur in Utah wants to patent a system for creating ads on the moon. David Jones, owner of Moon Publicity of West Valley City, Utah, has filed a U.S. provisional application for "Shadow Shaping," a system that uses robotic vehicles to carve product names, logos and web URLs into the surface of the moon...

Patent Models on Display at Harvard

Posted on August 05, 2009
Harvard University's Science Center has a new exhibit of 19th century American patent models. The exhibit, which is called "Patent Republic," is on display until December and features about 75 patent models from the collection of Susan M. E. Glendening, a New York collector...

Patent Statistics and Economic Development: Pros and Cons

Posted on August 04, 2009
Patent attorney Stephen Nipper and fellow blogger Chris Blanchard make some interesting comments on the use and misuse of patent statistics as measures of economic development and technological innovation. Both point to the case of Idaho, which in recent years has been ranked #1 in patents per capita thanks to the presence of Micron and HP, two patent powerhouses, in Boise...

US Patent Counts, Q2 2009

Posted on July 17, 2009
The USPTO issued 48,596 patents in Q2, down slightly from 2008, and published 81,288 applications, 4.6 percent more than the same period last year. Approximately 2.1 million plant and utility patent applications have been published since 2001. The USPTO is on track to publish more than 330,000 applications in 2009, which would be the largest total on record...

Inventor of Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed, 1916-2009

Posted on June 23, 2009
The inventor of the Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed, John Houghtaling, died last week at the age of 92. Houghtaling patented his invention in 1962 (US 3,035,572), and founded Magic Fingers, Inc. to commercialize it. His company installed millions of units in hotel and motel rooms across America in the 1960s and 70s...

AusPat v1.3 Enhancements

Posted on June 19, 2009
IP Australia has announced the release of AusPat v1.3, the new web-based Australian patent database that replaced the PatSearch system in early 2008. AusPat v1.3 enhancements include (quoting from the release memo):"e-Journal functionality has been incorporated into AusPat with the introduction of a new search field (called ?Publication?) allowing users to search by Publication Action and Journal* Range...

The Patented Mouse That Roared

Posted on June 03, 2009
This week's Nature magazine reports that two genetic research labs, Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine and the Central Institute for Experimental Animals in Kawasaki, Japan, are involved in dispute over a patent mouse. CIEA sued Jackson in December, 2008 for infringing its patent, US 7,145,055, issued in 2006...

Canada Rejects Amazon's One-Click Patent

Posted on May 28, 2009
The Canadian Patent Appeal Board has rejected Amazon's patent application (CA 2246933 A1) for its one-click online shopping feature, according to a report in ipFrontline. The Board's decision deals a blow against so-called business methods, which it believes are not patentable subject matter under the Canadian Patent Act.

Boliven Patent Goes Commercial

Posted on May 05, 2009
Boliven Patents is now a "professional-grade" fee-based service, according to an e-mail sent yesterday to current members of the Boliven Network. The service was launched in January as a free beta patent search engine with integrated analytical tools, search alerts and data export functions...

New Website Compares Patent Search Systems

Posted on April 23, 2009
Landon IP, a private firm specializing in patent and trademark searches and patent analytics, has launched Intellogist, a free website that aims to help patent searchers locate sources of patent information, evaluate public and commercial patent search systems and exchange best practices in prior art searching...

USPC Class Order #1886

Posted on April 12, 2009
The USPTO has published Classification Order #1886, which affects subclasses in Class 439 - Electrical Connectors. As of April 8, there are approximately 76,000 patents and 17,000 published applications classfied in Class 439, which is the "generic class for a pair of mated conductors comprising at least two electrically conducting elements which are interconnected to permit relative motion of such conducting elements during use without a break in electrical conductivity...

US Patent Counts, Q1 2009

Posted on April 05, 2009
The number of US patents (B docs) issued in Q1 was 49,227, a 13 percent increase over 2008. However, this may be only a temporary blip. The USPTO's campaign to improve patent quality has increased the number of rejections to a level not seen in several decades...

IPC Reforms Aim to Integrate USPTO, EPO and JPO Classifications

Posted on March 27, 2009
WIPO just announced a series of reforms that will simplify the IPC. One of the goals is to accelerate the building of a unified IPC system that integrates USPTO, EPO and JPO classifications. Could a true international patent classification system be at hand?This is a positive step and should make life easier for patent searchers of all levels of experience, from novices to experts...

Trademarks Go Green

Posted on March 20, 2009
World Intellectual Property Day is April 26, just over a month away. This year's theme is green innovation. The environment and climate change have become major political and public opinion issues in the over last few years. Companies and advertisers have certainly noticed this trend and are keen to link their products and services with environmentally friendly values...

USPC Class Order #1886 - Class 439

Posted on March 05, 2009

Canadian Patents Reach 18,554 in 2007-2008

Posted on March 05, 2009

US Issues Patent 7,500,000

Posted on March 03, 2009

USPTO Publishes 2,000,000th Application

Posted on March 01, 2009

Wikipedia References Increase

Posted on February 15, 2009
The Jan. 29 of CNET's Buzz Report has a funny rant about Apple's recently issued patent on a multi-touch graphical user interface. (US 7479949) Complaining about the USPTO's examination practices, reporter Molly Wood cites examples of existing prior art on multi-touch technology...

Titles Added to Cited References in FPO

Posted on February 15, 2009
US patent records in FreePatentsOnline now display titles of cited US patent documents. This is a nice improvement since it provides more information about the reference without forcing you to leave the current document. Titles of cited references available in the USPTO database nor are included on patent documents...

Inventor of TASER stun gun dies at age 88

Posted on February 15, 2009
Jack (John) Cover, inventor of the TASER stun gun used by thousands of police departments worldwide, has died at the age of 88. According to his obituary in the Washington Post, Cover, a former NASA scientist, invented the nonlethal device in the late 1960s in response to hijackings and riots...

Top Inventor Receives 577 US Patents in 2008

Posted on February 12, 2009
The other rather surprising statistic in the Boliven Patents Top 25 Report for 2008 was number of patents secured by the top-ranked inventor, Kia Silverbrook, founder of Silverbrook Research, a private R&D firm based in Sydney, Australia that specializes in inkjet printer technology...

Chinese University Ranks 10 in US Patents

Posted on February 12, 2009
This week Boliven Patents released its first Top 25 Report for 2008. Some rather unexpected statistics caught my attention. The first was in the university assignees category. Not surprisingly, US schools dominated the list. The top five included the Univ...

Canadian Patents Database - Representative Drawings

Posted on February 10, 2009
The CIPO's Canadian Patents Database now displays representative drawings in patent records. This is a great improvement as it allows searchers to immediately see drawings as they scan search results instead of requiring them to open up the drawing image file for each record...

New USPC Classification Orders: #1881-1884

Posted on February 10, 2009
The USPTO's patent classification office has been busy the past few weeks. Four new classification orders (#s 1881, 1882, 1883, 1884) have been published since January 1, not including the one that I mentioned the other day that established Class 850 (#1885)...

New USPC Class: 850 - Scanning Probe Techniques or Apparatus

Posted on February 08, 2009
The USPTO has created a new USPC class for inventions related to devices that scan or probe at the nano-scale. The full title is Class 850, Scanning-probe techniques and apparatus; applications of scanning probe techniques, e.g. scanning probe microscopy (SPM)...

Consolidated Glossary of USPC Terms

Posted on February 08, 2009
A new Consolidated Glossary of U.S. Patent Classification Terms is now available on the USPTO patent classification website. The glossary consists of a comprehensive list of terms taken from the classification definitions of the USPC. Terms are listed in alphabetical order and grouped by class number for easy browsing...

New Patent Databse from Boliven

Posted on February 05, 2009
Boliven, a New York-based company, has launched a free patent database called Boliven Patents Beta. The database contains data and images for US patents from 1976 to present, EP documents from 1978 forward, WO applications from 1989 forward and JP abstracts from 1976 forward...

Patent Filings Slow Amid Economic Slowdown

Posted on January 28, 2009
The worldwide economic crisis appears to be having an impact on international patent filings. This week the WIPO announced that the number of international patent application filings in 2008 increased by 2.4 percent, a big drop from the 9.3 percent average pver the past several years...

New Guide to Using Patent Information from WIPO

Posted on January 22, 2009
WIPO recently published a new 44-page guide to using patent information. The guide explains what a patent is, the information contained in a patent document, where patent information can be found, and how to use basic patent search strategies. Almost half of the guide is devoted to explaining how patent information can be used...

Locating Re-examination Certificates

Posted on January 20, 2009
Patent attorney Stephen Nipper recently posted on his blog, The Invent Blog, a question about re-examination numbers. It seems that the USPTO website has some erroneous examples of re-examination document numbers. In brief, anyone may file a request for a rexamination of a patent on the basis of prior art consisting of patents or other publications...

Promoting IP Awareness - Database of Materials

Posted on January 14, 2009
The WIPO has a new database called IP Outreach in Practice which contains "basic information and links to practical examples of interesting IP outreach initiatives." It's quite an interesting collection and a great place to look for inspiration and ideas...

Browser Toolbar for Patent Info Resources

Posted on January 09, 2009
Patent Pal is a new browser toolbar that links numerous patent information tools and resources. Included are over 30 patent search sites, numerous IP blogs and newsfeeds, patent office websites, manuals, job sites, and much more. Users can customize the toolbar and add their favorite sites...

Patent Databases: 2008 in Review

Posted on January 01, 2009
USPTOEarly in 2008 the USPTO installed verification software in its Public PAIR (Patent Application Information Retrieval) system that requires users to enter a two-word code in order to access patent and published application files. This was done in response to repeated bulk downloading by web spiders and automated scripts that severely degraded PAIR's performance...

New Kind Codes for Republished PCT Documents

Posted on December 30, 2008
WIPO is introducing three new kind codes for republished international applications that will be implemented on Jan. 1, 2009. The codes are:A4 = Later publication of amended claims and/or statement (PCT Article 19) with revised front pageA8 = International application republished with corrections to front page bibliographic dataA9 = International application or ISR republished with corrections, alterations or supplements (see also WIPO Standard ST...

U.S. Patent Counts - Year in Review

Posted on December 30, 2008
Figure 1. U.S. Patent (blue) and PGPub (red) Counts, Q42008 was a typical year for U.S. patents and published applications, but there were some surprises. The USPTO continued to churn out huge quantities of published applications (A docs), publishing slightly more than 312,000 applications this year, a 4...

PatentScope Suppresses Inventor Address Data

Posted on December 29, 2008
WIPO has announced that due to privacy concerns it will remove address data for inventors and individual applicants from its PatentScope database. The data will not be indexed or displayed in Internet search engines. This will not affect PatentScope searches or RSS search alerts...

FreePatentsOnline Launches CitePatents

Posted on December 28, 2008
FreePatentsOnline has launched a new site called CitePatents that is designed to make it easier for journalists, bloggers, copy writers and website owners and to link to patent documents. I hope this encourages more newspapers to link to patent documents in their stories...

Searching the USPC: Proximate Function

Posted on December 28, 2008
For novice patent searchers one of the most difficult concepts in the U.S. Patent Classification system is the idea that inventions can be classified on the basis of "proximate function." Proximate function is one of four schemes in the USPC used to classify subject matter disclosed in patents and published applications...

A.C. Gilbert - Inventor of the Erector Set and the "man who saved Christmas"

Posted on December 23, 2008
The other day when I was channel surfing I happened across a movie called The Man Who Saved Christmas, starring Jason Alexander as Alfred C. Gilbert, the inventor of the Erector set, one of the classic American toys of the 20th century. Gilbert became known as the "man who saved Christmas" during World War I when the U...

EPO Adds Latin American Patents

Posted on December 15, 2008
The EPO has added patent data from Cost Rica (CR), Peru (PE) and El Salvador (SV) to esp@cenet and some of its other patent data products. In addition, data from Cuba (CU) which had not been updated from 1996, will be re-introduced in the database at the end of December...

Patented in China: New Report from Thomson Reuters

Posted on December 15, 2008
Thomson Reuters has published a new report called "Patented in China: the Present and Future State of Innovation in China." Patent filings from China have been growing faster than any other region in the last few years and if the trend continues it will become the "dominant country in the patent landscape" by 2012...

FreePatentsOnline Increases Personal Portfolios to 10,000 Documents

Posted on December 01, 2008
Individual accounts on FreePatentsOnline now can contain up to 20 portfolios and up to 10,000 patent documents. Users are still limited to exporting bibiliographic data from a maximum of 250 documents at a time. These improvements will be useful for searchers who maintain large collections of patent documents or who run multiple patent searches...

Betty James, Wife of Slinky Inventor Arnold James , Dies at 90

Posted on November 28, 2008
Betty James, wife of Richard James, the naval engineer who invented the world-famous Slinky spring toy in 1945, has passed away at the age of 90. Her obit is in the New York Times. Mrs. James named the toy 'Slinky'. The Slinky is one of the great toy invention success stories of the 20th century...

Snow Bike Hits Slopes

Posted on November 28, 2008
Skiers and snowboarders may see something different on the slopes this winter... Two entrepreneurs from Vancouver Island hope to launch the next winter sports craze with their snow bike, a winter version of a mountain bike. Called the Ktrak, the bike is equipped with a ski in the place of the front wheel and a rubber track around the back wheel...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on November 26, 2008
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the States and in a few hours millions of Americans will be sitting down to a traditional turkey dinner. In honour of that noble and self-sacrificing bird, here are a few turkey-related patents. Of course, few people today actually hunt and kill there own turkey...

Canada Dry Ginger Ale at 100

Posted on November 26, 2008
A little over one hundred years ago, John James McLaughlin, a Toronto pharmacist, created one of the world's most famous carbonated beverages, Canada Dry Pale Ginger Ale, the "champagne of ginger ales." McLaughlin started in 1890 manufacturing soda water and eventually decided to create a beverage with a little more pizazz...

Patents and Biotech - a Broken System? Fixed by Information

Posted on November 21, 2008
A couple of months ago a Montreal-based non-profit IP consulting firm called The Innovation Partnership issued an interesting report calling for changes in the way biotechnology IP is created, disseminated and protected. In recent years there has been much debate in academic and research circles about whether the prolific patenting and licensing of biotechnology IP inhibits pure research and information sharing...

USPTO Annual Report FY2008 - 495,095 new applications!

Posted on November 19, 2008
The USPTO released its annual report for FY2008 and the numbers are staggering. According to preliminary statistics, inventors filed a record-breaking 495,095 applications from Oct. 1, 2007-Sept. 30, 2008. This is a 5.7 percent increase over FY2007. Interestingly, there was a 33...

USPTO Issues 68 New Secrecy Orders in 2008

Posted on November 09, 2008
A blog posting at the New Scientist magazine claims that the USPTO issued secrecy orders on 68 new patent applications and rescinded 47 older orders in the year ending Sept. 30. A total of 5,023 secrecy orders are still in effect. The USPTO reports the number of secret cases in condition for allowance in its annual report, which is usually released in November...

End in Sight for IP Australia's PatSearch System

Posted on November 09, 2008
IP Australia has announced that it will update Patsearch, its legacy patent search system, weekly on Mondays starting Nov. 22, 2008. The system will be decommissioned in February 2009. AusPat, the new patent search system, was launched in April 2008 and contains bibliographic data from about 1970 forward and full text from 1998 forward...

Patent Offices Agree on Work Sharing Initiative

Posted on November 03, 2008
Joff Wild at IAM Magazine reports that the EPO, JPO, USPTO, SIPO and KIPO have just reached an agreement on a major work-sharing initiative that will reduce duplication and enhance patent examination. Part of the agreement includes the creation of 10 "Foundation Projects"...

New Esp@cenet Improvements

Posted on October 31, 2008
It's October... the time of year when patent searchers wait and watch for news from esp@cenet. The EPO rolled out its latest esp@cenet improvements this week. The most impressive is a beta search function called SmartSearch. SmartSearch allows the user to enter terms such as inventor name, keyword, publication number, date, etc...

SumoBrain Offers Free Registration

Posted on October 22, 2008
SumoBrain, the patent search system from the creators of FreePatentsOnline, is now offering free accounts. SumoBrain features full-text cross-collection searching of US patents and applications, EP patents and applications, PCT documents and Japanese abstracts, portfolios, alerts, and PDF download capabilities (for a fee)...

Scientific Fraud and Patents

Posted on October 05, 2008
According to a report in the Oct. 2 issue of Nature, IP Australia is taking some heat for issuing a patent (AU2004309300B B2) to discredited Korean scientist Dr. Woo Suk Hwang that was based on fabricated data. In 2004 and 2005 Dr. Hwang claimed to have created a stem-cell line from a cloned human embryo...

USPC Class Orders 1879, 1880

Posted on October 05, 2008
On Sept. 2, the USPTO issued Classification Order 1879 covering changes to design class D14, Recording, Communication, or Information Retrieval Equipment. New subclasses have been established for flash type memory drives, karaoke systems and digital media recorders...

U.S. Patent Counts, Q3 2008

Posted on October 02, 2008
The USPTO published 72,421 patent applications (A docs) in Q3, a 3 percent decrease over the same quarter last year and a 6.78 percent drop from the previous quarter. On October 2, the USPTO published a record-breaking 8,955 patent applications. If these had been counted in Q3, the total would have been a hefty 81,376...

Comparison of Free Patent Databases

Posted on September 26, 2008
Patent databases continue to proliferate on the internet. The most recent addition is Patents.com, which describes itself as "one of the most comprehensive free patent search services on the web." I get a little annoyed when I see claims such as this, especially when the database provider doesn't state the contents and dates of coverage...

Patents and Wall Street

Posted on September 21, 2008
We typically think of innovation as a good thing: Needs inspire ideas, ideas develop into inventions, inventions become patents, and patents make possible new products and services that enhance the quality of human life. But is innovation ever a bad thing? Well, yes, innovation can have a negative effect when it leads to unintended or unforeseen results...

Eco-Patent Commons

Posted on September 11, 2008
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has developed an Eco-Patent Commons, a website where companies can pledge their environmentally-friendly patents to the public domain. So far, seven companies, Bosch, DuPont, IBM, Nokia, Pitney Bowes, Sony and Xerox have pledged about 75 patents...

Arctic Biotechnology Revealed in Patents

Posted on September 09, 2008
Could more effective medicines and tastier ice cream come from the belly of a shrimp living in the icy waters off Greenland? A new report called Bioprospecting in the Arctic, sponsored by the United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies, looks at the current state of research into useful genetic materials found in plants, animals, fish and microbes living in the far north...

IPI-ConfEx 2009, March 1-5 - Venice, Italy

Posted on September 05, 2008
Registration is now open for next year's IPI-ConfEx, a patent information conference organized by European patent information professional associations. The host city is Venice-Mestre and the theme is "Best Practices in Patent Information Management and Searching...

2008 World Patent Report

Posted on September 03, 2008
The WIPO recently released its 2008 World Patent Report, which contains all kinds of interesting statistics on patent activity worldwide. In 2006, a stunning 1.76 million new applications were filed worldwide, driven largely by filings in China, Korea and the U...

Patents.com - PatentMonkey Redux

Posted on September 03, 2008
There's (yet) another way to search patents on the internet: A new patent database/IP exchange portal called Patents.com has just launched. Patents.com is the brainchild of Robert Monster, a hi-tech venture capitalist, authority on market research and former product developer for Procter and Gamble, and Paul Ratcliffe, a patent attorney and founder of PatentMonkey...

Austrian esp@cenet Upgrade - New Content and Search Capabilities

Posted on September 03, 2008
According to an announcement on the esp@cenet web site, an upgrade to the Austrian esp@cenet server has added additional content and capabilities. It now contains AT A and B documents and utility models from 1995 forward. Advanced search features now include full text searching, date range searching and multiple keywords...

How are Engineering Librarians Using Patent Information?

Posted on August 28, 2008
A few months ago I surveyed my fellow academic engineering librarians to find out how they were using web-based patent databases in their day-to-day work with students and faculty. Patent literature has had a role in engineering education, especially design engineering courses, for many decades...

Patent Buddy Ranks Patent Attorneys

Posted on August 20, 2008
Patent Buddy is a new service that provides data (obtained from the USPTO) on registered patent attorneys and their employment histories since 2001. It claims to have data on 38,669 attorneys from ~13,000 organizations. You can search by name, registration #, organization, and geographic location...

Speedo's New Swimsuit Big Winner in Beijing

Posted on August 15, 2008
Speedo's new swimsuit, called the Fastskin LZR Racer, is grabbing attention at the Beijing Olympics. Two recently published US patent applications, US20080141431 and US20080141430, may reveal the technical secrets behind the innovative design that some say is responsible for the record-breaking performances of swimmers such as Michael Phelps of the US...

2008 World Patent Report

Posted on August 14, 2008
The World Intellectual Property Organization has released its 2008 World Patent Report. The 72-page report provides a statistical overview of worldwide patent activity, including the number of patent filings, granted patents, patent families, patents in force, patents by field of technology and the cost of patenting.

Proofreading Patents May Save Big $$$

Posted on August 13, 2008
The USPTO published more than 480,000 patent documents in 2007, so it isn't surprising that a few of them contain errors. Last year the PTO issued 23,000 certificates of correction (CCs), or about 12.5% of all issued patents. CCs are issued to correct typographical errors and other minor defects...

Inventor's Last Wish: Bury me in my invention.

Posted on August 12, 2008
WIPO Magazine reports about the final wish of inventor Frederic Baur, a food chemist for Procter and Gamble. In 1966 Baur applied for a patent on a container for Pringles potato chips (US348798). Baur died in May at the age of 89 and requested that his body be cremated and his ashes buried in a Pringles can...

Youngest Patent Holder?

Posted on August 12, 2008
The current issue of WIPO Magazine features a story about a boy who may be the world's youngest patent holder. Samuel Thomas Houghton of Buxton, UK was only three years old when he had an idea for an improved broom. His father, a patent attorney, applied for a GB patent, which was granted on April 2, 2008 (GB2438091)...

Using RF to Treat Cancer

Posted on July 21, 2008
Last night Sixty Minutes did an interesting story on an inventor named John Kanzius who has developed a new radiofrequency therapy to treat tumors and cancerous cells. Kanzius, who has no technical or medical training, was inspired to invent by his fight with leukemia, a disease which still threatens to take his life...

Transparency in the US Patent System

Posted on July 20, 2008
An op-ed piece in the July 14th Wall Street Journal by L. Gordon Crovitz makes an interesting case about the shortcomings of the US patent system and the recent failure of Congress to enact patent reform. One of his criticisms is the lack of transparency in the system...

Classification Order 1878 - Class 16, Misc. Hardware and Class 52, Buildings

Posted on July 20, 2008
The USPTO has issued a new classification order, #1878, covering changes to Classes 16, Miscellaneous Hardware, and 52, Static Structures (Buildings). Static structures include all types of constructions ranging from amusement park rides and sports stadiums to wind turbines and gravestones...

Medical Innovators: Michael E. Debakey

Posted on July 14, 2008
Dr. Michael DeBakey, a heart surgeon who invented dozens of medical procedures, devices and instruments, died this weekend at age 99 after a extremely long and productive career. (He continued practicing medicine well into his 90s.) While in medical school in the 1930s, he devised a device called a roller pump that eventually would become a core technology in heart-lung machines...

Researchers See Patent Quality in Rising Citation Counts

Posted on July 14, 2008
Joff Wild, a journalist and blogger for Intellectual Asset Management Magazine, makes some interesting observations about a new study that claims that the quality of patents issued by the USPTO is rising. The research found, among other things, significant growth in prior art citations in issued patents over the last five years: 41 percent more US patent docs, 36 percent more foreign patent docs and 23 percent more non-patent literature...

U.S. Patent Counts, Q2 2008

Posted on July 09, 2008
The USPTO published 77,691 patent applications (A docs) in Q2, a six percent increase over the same quarter last year and the second straight quarter over 77,000, but a slight decline from the Q1 2008. The USPTO is on track to publish over 310,000 applications this year...

When I teach people how to conduct

Posted on July 05, 2008
When I teach people how to conduct a proper search of the patent literature, I always find it challenging to convince them that they need to include older patents in their searches. Most people, especially undergraduate students, are content to do keyword searches that will retrieve only patents from the mid-1970s forward...

Pringles Aren't Potato Chips

Posted on July 05, 2008
A UK judge has decided that Pringles aren't potato chips, which could save Procter & Gamble millions in taxes every year. The judge based his decision in part on the fact that the chip-like snack is only 42 percent potato. The UK doesn't apply sales tax to most foods, but potato chips and other snack-like products are taxed...

Happy Independence Day!

Posted on July 04, 2008
A few patriotic patents for your enjoyment on the 4th of July. The first is a jack-in-the-box featuring a rather creepy-looking Uncle Sam (US978489); next are matching picture frames with Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam--a perfect gift for queen and king who have everything! (US1283100); the third is a bottle shaped like Uncle Sam holding what appears to be a rifle--for taking shots at squirrels and evil doers?! (USD29331); and, finally, two flags inspired by the design of the US flag...

Peer to Patent Review Program Update

Posted on July 02, 2008
The USPTO has announced the results of its year-long patent review pilot program called Peer to Patent. The purpose of the program, which was launched in June 2007, was to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of an online-based system where registered experts could submit prior art related to pending patent applications...

Happy Canada Day!

Posted on July 01, 2008
In honour of Canada Day, here are a few Canadian industrial designs that are based on the maple leaf, the national symbol of Canada. All were retrieved from the CIPO's industrial design database, which includes designs registered from1861 to the present...

New Book: Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel

Posted on June 21, 2008
This is library conference season, so I've been racking up frequently flyer miles by the thousands. Air travel isn't as fun for me as it was pre 9/11, but spending hours in the air does give me an opportunity to catch up on my reading. On my most recent flight I finished Mr...

New Patent PDF Download Tool

Posted on June 09, 2008
Patent Retriever is a new service for downloading patent documents. Launched just days ago (May 30), it will retrieve US, EP and WO (PCT) patent documents in PDF format fairly quickly, although I haven't timed it against other similar services. Users may download single documents or up to ten documents in batch download mode...

Helvetica

Posted on June 07, 2008
Last night I watched a very interesting documentary by Gary Hustwit called Helvetica. It was a fascinating conversation with graphic designers about the font Helvetica, typography and graphic design. Helvetica was created in 1957 by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas type foundry in Munchenstein, Switzerland and within a decade became the world's most successful and well-known font...

Classification Order 1877 - Class 606, Surgery

Posted on June 01, 2008
The USPTO has recently published Classification Order #1877 affecting subclasses in Class 606, Surgery. Class 606 is part of a mega-class composed of Classes 128, 600, 601, 602, 604, 606, 607. Class 606 covers surgical instruments. This is the third classification order issued this year...

New Patent PDF Download Tool

Posted on June 01, 2008
IP Newsflash (IPN), an information portal for IP news, official notices and case law, has added a patent document download to its suite of patent information tools. Users can retrieve a PDF copy of any patent document in the EPO's Open Patent Services (OPS) database by entering a patent or publication number...

Early U.S. Patents Recovered

Posted on May 05, 2008
The USPTO has recently added to its patent database approximately 500 patents issued from 1790-1836 that were lost for 175 years. These documents were among the approximately 10,000 patents destroyed when the Patent Office, which was located in Blodgett's Hotel in downtown DC, burned down on the night of December 15, 1836...

New Series Codes for Utility/Plant and Provisional Applications

Posted on April 25, 2008
According to the USPTO website, there are new series codes for utility/plant and provisional application serial numbers. The new codes are "12" for utility/plant applications and "61" for provisional applications. The first applications of 2008 were 12/5,841 and 61/9,389, so the new series must have been implemented in December 2007...

Father of Modern Denistry - G. V. Black

Posted on April 15, 2008
Whenever I go to the dentist, I'm amazed at the number of specialty instruments and gadgets used to clean and repair teeth. Many of these are patented. According to the USPTO website, 19,194 patents issued since 1790 are classified in Class 433, Dentistry, in addition to 3,742 published applications...

May the IP Force Be With You

Posted on April 09, 2008
According to press reports, George Lucas and his company Lucasfilm are suing Andrew Ainsworth, a London-based prop designer, for copyright infringement for selling replica Star Wars stormtrooper armor. Ainsworth, who produced costumes for the first Star Wars movie in 1976, is disputing the copyright...

Advice for High-Tech Independent Inventors

Posted on April 04, 2008
As a patent librarian, it's easy to become too comfortable with the stereotype of the independent inventor as someone who tinkers with simple inventions, such as toys and garden tools. After all, many people who seek our help are students and first-time inventors with little technical training, not neurosurgeons and electrical engineers...

Esp@cenet Improvements in 2008

Posted on April 04, 2008
The latest edition (1/2008) of Patent Information News, the European Patent Office's quarterly newsletter on patent information, documentation and searching, is now available.Page 10 includes a list of esp@cenet improvements planned for 2008. They are: 1...

Guitar Hero Hits Sour Note

Posted on March 31, 2008
Last week Nashville-based Gibson Guitar filed a patent infringement lawsuit against MTV Networks, Harmonix and Electronic Arts, makers of the popular Guitar Hero video games. Gibson claims that Guitar Hero violates a 1999 patent for a similar technology...

Edison Wasn't the First

Posted on March 31, 2008
On the original Star Trek series, one of the running jokes was ensign Chekov's tendency to claim that this or that technology was "invented in Russia". Well, he may not have been right but the popular notion that the most celebrated inventions of the 19th century were the products of lone (American) inventors is definitely wrong...

WHAM-O's 60th Anniversary Kid Inventor Contest

Posted on March 30, 2008
The new issue of WIPO Magazine has several interesting articles, including one on the 60th anniversary of the WHAM-O toy company. Wham-O is best known for introducing the hula hoop to America in 1958, followed by Frisbee flying discs, Slip 'n' Slide and Superball...

Patenting the Atomic Bomb

Posted on March 30, 2008
Many thanks to Danianne Mizzy of the University of Pennsylvania for sharing this NPR story on the role of patents in the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s. Many of the scientists (and their universities) involved in the Manahattan Project, including Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Ernest O...

U.S. Patent Counts, Q1 2008

Posted on March 30, 2008
The USPTO published a record-breaking 77,962 patent applications (A docs) in Q1, an 11 percent increase over the same quarter last year. This was a strong rebound from the 73,450 A docs published in Q4 2007. Approximately 1.7 million plant and utilty patent applications have been published since 2001...

Paris Convention and Public Access to Patents

Posted on March 28, 2008
This year is the 125th anniversary of signing of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, one of the cornerstones of the modern international industrial property system. The treaty was signed in Paris by representatives of 11 countries on March 20, 1883...

Review: Japanese-English Chemical Dictionary

Posted on March 26, 2008
Japanese-English Chemical Dictionary: Including a Guide to Japanese Patents and Scientific Literature. Edited by Markus Gewehr. Wiley-VCH, 2007. 680 p. $230 ISBN 978-3527312931 My library just received a copy of this very impressive reference work. The bulk of the book consists of a dictionary of more than 60,000 Japanese scientific and technical terms...

USPTO Class Order 1876 - Class 73: Measuring and Testing

Posted on March 25, 2008
The USPTO has published Classification Order #1876 affecting Class 73, Measuring and Testing. This is the generic class for processes and apparatus for making measurements or tests of any kind. New mainline headings in the class include:112.01 Turbine engine113...

Spark-IP: Patent Search Tool

Posted on March 16, 2008
High-quality patent databases are so commonplace on the web these days it's hard to get excited about yet another offering. Sure... there's always room for improvement, but how many patent databases does the world really need? Apparently, it does.Spark-IP was launched last October as an "eBay" for intellectual property owners to advertise their inventions and technologies available for licensing...

Tupperware Patents

Posted on March 13, 2008
The U.S. economy may be sputtering, consumer confidence is tanking, and food and energy prices are at all-time highs. But there's one company that sees a silver lining in all this gloomy news. Tupperware, the 62-year old company famous for its plastic food storage products, knows that when times are bad, it's sales go up...

In Search of the Perfect Battery

Posted on March 10, 2008
The Economist has published an excellent article on the history of automotive battery technology. It notes that electric cars were common in the first decade of the 20th century until the invention of the electric starter in 1912 made internal combustion engines, which provided better range and power, the dominant technology...

New Classification Order - Class PLT

Posted on March 10, 2008
The USPTO has issued a new classification order (#1875) affecting Class PLT (Plants). The order establishes about 100 new subclasses under a new main heading called "Herbaceous Ornamental Flowering Plant (Nicotina, Masturtium, etc.)".

PCT Filings Set New Record in 2007

Posted on March 08, 2008
2007 was another record-breaking year for international patent application filings, according to a recent press release by the World Intellectual Propety Organization. A total of 156,100 applications were filed last year, a 4.7 percent increase from the year before...

USPTO Patent Manual Archive

Posted on March 08, 2008
The USPTO has made available all editions and revisions of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) back to 1948. The original (un-numbered) edition of 1948, the Manual of Patent Office Procedure, included extensive material previously published by the Patent Office Society...

2008 Inductees to National Inventors Hall of Fame

Posted on February 17, 2008
The USPTO and National Inventors Hall of Fame (Akron, Ohio) have announced the 2008 inductees into the NIHF. The seven living inventors inducted are:Ruth Benerito for wrinkle-free cotton (55+ patents)Amar Bose for improvements in audio technology (30 patents)Nick Holonyak, Jr...

Google Patents Update

Posted on February 13, 2008
Google Patents now includes US published applications and patents through at least the end of 2007. Google engineers have added a filter to the advanced search form that allows you to retrieve only issued patents or applications. However, there are still numerous problems with the search engine...

Manual of Patent Examining Procedure Online

Posted on February 13, 2008
The USPTO has made available scanned copies of all editions and revisions of the Manual of Patenting Examining Procedure (MPEP) from 1948 forward. Previously, only the most recent editions were available online. This collection will be useful for locating historical information on US patent documentation, numbering systems, classification and prior art rules.

PatentMonkey Update

Posted on February 12, 2008
The patent search portal PatentMonkey.com, which I reviewed last February, has been acquired by Patents.com, a new firm headed by venture capitalist Robert Monster, PatentMonkey founder Paul Ratcliffe and Steve Pinkos, former deputy undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and deputy director of the the USPTO from 2004-2007...

2007 Top U.S. Patent Assignees from ISIClaims

Posted on January 21, 2008
Last week IFIClaims, a patent information company owned by Walters Kluwer Health , released its annual list of top U.S. patent assignees for 2007. According to the report, the USPTO issued 157,284 utility patents last year, a decline of about 10 percent from 2006...

IPI-ConfEx 2008 - International Patent Information Conference

Posted on January 20, 2008
The final program for IPI-ConfEx 2008, an international patent information conference, is now available online. IPI-ConfEx is scheduled for March 2-5 in Seville, Spain and will feature a of presentations from EPO and WIPO staff, patent information vendors and corporate patent searchers...

Fictional Brands

Posted on January 20, 2008
Last Sunday's Toronto Star had an interesting story about fictional brands from film and literature that have inspired real-life products. Some examples include HOLIDAY INN hotels, said to have been inspired by the 1942 Bing Crosby movie of the same name, and BRAWNDO energy drink, a fake brand from Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy...

Infringement = Triple Word Score

Posted on January 19, 2008
An AP story reports that Hasbro and Mattel, makers of Scrabble(R), are unhappy with an unauthorized online version of the game called Scrabulous. The companies, which share worldwide rights to the boardgame, have sent cease-and-desist letters to the two brothers from India who created the online version which is very popular on Facebook...

Public PAIR Verification System

Posted on January 12, 2008
The USPTO has implemented a new verification system for users accessing Public PAIR (Patent Application Information Retrieval). Users must now enter a two-word verification code in order to access the system. The system is meant to block bots and spiders...

Everyday Edisons - Season 3

Posted on January 08, 2008
Everyday Edisons, a show about inventing that debuted on PBS last year, has announced its casting calls for season 3. The first casting call will be in Atlanta on Jan. 12. Other cities in the schedule include San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago and Boston...

New Classification Orders, #1867-1874

Posted on January 03, 2008
The USPTO has issued eight new classifications orders since Oct. 1, 2007, an unusually large number for a three-month period. Classes affected include:711 - Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory714 - Error detection/correction and fault detection/recovery715 - Data processing: presentation processing of document, operator interface processing, and screen saver display processing506 - Combinatorial chemistry technology: method, library, apparatus435 - Chemistry: molecular biology and microbiology374 - Thermal measuring and testing365 - Static information storage and retrieval360 - Dynamic magnetic information storage or retrieval318 - Electricity: motive power systems

Chinese Patent Databases, EPC 2000, etc.

Posted on January 03, 2008
The December issue of Patent Information News has several interesting and useful articles on free patent databases from China; the impact of the European Patent Convention (EPC 2000) on patent information searchers; and patent information from Asia.

USPTO Discontinues Another Paper Publication

Posted on January 01, 2008
According to a notice published in the Federal Register, the USPTO is discontinuing the paper version of its Patent and Trademark Office Notices effective December 25, 2007. The Notices, which are also published in the weekly Official Gazette, include announcements on USPTO policies, fees, mailing addresses and patent attorney registration...

Wikipedia References in Issued Patents

Posted on January 01, 2008
Back in September 2006 the USPTO banned patent examiners from using Wikipedia as a source of prior art information, citing its unreliability and lack of authority. Well, this apparently hasn't stopped examiners or inventors from citing the popular online encyclopedia in patents...

U.S. Patent and PGPub Year-End Review

Posted on December 30, 2007
2007 was a bit of a mixed bag for U.S. patents and published applications. In Q4 the USPTO published 73,450 applications, the lowest number in more than a year and a 3 percent drop from the same quarter in 2006. However, the total number of PGPubs for the calendar year was 300,198, a 1...

Canadians Too Lazy to Invent?

Posted on December 29, 2007
A recent op-ed in the Globe and Mail (Dec. 27) uses patent statistics to make the case that Canada, in general, and the province of Alberta, specifically, needs to focus more on math, science and the creative arts in schools in order to ensure future prosperity...

E-Documents as Prior Art

Posted on December 19, 2007
Wynn Coggins, director for the USPTO's Group 3620 (Electronic Commerce), has written an article called "When is an Electronic Document a Printed Publication for Prior Art Purposes?

New Report: Patents per 100K Workers, 2001-2006

Posted on December 19, 2007
The State Science and Technology Institute (SSTI), a nonprofit organization that supports economic development through science, technology and innovation, has released a new report showing the ranking in number of patents issued per 100,000 workers for U...

EPO Survey: esp@cenet Exporting Function

Posted on December 19, 2007
The EPO is conducting a survey on a proposed improvement to esp@cenet scheduled for 2008. Specifically, they're asking for feedback on the usefulness of exporting data in CSV or XML formats. Currently, the only patent office database (that I'm aware of) that supports exporting is the German PTO's DEPATISnet...

Dutch Six-Year Patent Will End in 2008

Posted on December 14, 2007
The Netherlands Patent Office has announced that it will phase out its six-year patent (C1 document) in 2008. The six-year patent is a weaker form of patent protection than the standard 20-year patent. An application for a six-year patent is automatically registered without a novelty search or examination 18 months after filing...

Obama Promises More Transparency for Patent System

Posted on December 14, 2007
According to a story last month in the World Information Review, presidential candidate Barack Obama would make patent reform a top priority of his administration. One of his ideas is to open up the patent process to citizen input, which I assume would entail establishing a formal patent review program similar to the Community Patent Review Project being piloted by the New York Law School...

Inventors Hit the Links

Posted on December 13, 2007
I'm not a golfer but I know that golf is one of the world's most popular sports. According to the PGA website, there are 25 million amateur golfers in the U.S. alone. This huge multi-billion dollar industry is fertile ground for inventors seeking to cash in on golfers' legendary passion for anything that promises to improve their game or ease their journey across the fareway...

Big News in Patent Information Land

Posted on November 30, 2007
Joe Ebersole, founder and chief counsel for the Coalition for Patent and Trademark Information Dissemination, died on Oct. 18 in Washington, D.C. There's a brief obit in the December issue of Information Today (not yet available online) and the Washington Post (10/21)...

Plant Patents & Canadian Pears

Posted on November 04, 2007
Plant patents rarely make the news, so I was delighted to see a story in this weekend's Globe and Mail about a new type of pear cultivated by a team of Canadian scientists. The pear, which is known only by the designation "HW614", is a cross between several types of pears including the familiar Bartletts...

U.S. Patent Counts, July-Sept. 2007

Posted on November 04, 2007
Quarterly Patent and PGPub CountsQ1 || 47,332 | 74,277 | 121,609Q2 || 45,828 | 76,640 | 122,468Q3 || 44,567 | 75,831 | 120,398Q4 ||The third quarter of 2007 was relatively unremarkable with both patents (utility, design reissue and plant) and published applications experiencing a slight decline from the previous quarter...

Google Patents Delivers 2007 Patents

Posted on October 30, 2007
Patent searchers have been wondering for months when Google would update Google Patents, its database of U.S. patents launched in mid-2006. Although the USPTO publishes up to 10,000 new patent documents per week, Google Patents hasn't been updated since it was launched some sixteen months ago...

Chemical Structure Searching in Free Patent Databases?

Posted on October 25, 2007
The ability to search chemical compounds in public patent databases has always been very limited. Unlike commercial databases such as SciFinder Scholar, public patent databases have not offered tools for searching compounds by structure or formula. Nor do they include dictionaries of chemical synonyms...

Most Prolific Inventors

Posted on October 25, 2007
Contrary to popular opinion, Thomas Edison is not the world's most prolific inventor. So says technology writer Kevin Maney in the November issue of Condé Nast Portfolio. Although Edison received an impressive 1,093 U.S. patents during his lifetime, Maney has uncovered at least three living inventors, including one American, who beat Edison's record...

Baby Products, Patent Numbers and a Puzzle

Posted on September 20, 2007
My wife and I are going to be new parents any day now, so our house has been filling up with all kinds of cool baby-related products. (We're having twins, so that means two of everything.) Of course, I can't resist examing all these amazing products for patent numbers...

2007 Lasker Awards

Posted on September 19, 2007
The 2007 Lasker Awards, sometimes called "America's Nobels", were announced on Sept. 15. The Lasker Award for Outstanding Basic Medical Research was awarded to Dr. Steinman of Rockefellar University for his discovery of dendritic cells, a type of immune cell that plays a key role in the immune systems of humans and other mammals...

New USPC Classification Orders

Posted on September 16, 2007
The USPTO has recently issued several new classification orders affecting Classes 375 (Pulse or Digital Communications), 386 (Television Signal Processing for Dynamic Recording or Reproduction) and 525 (Synthetic Resins or Rubbers).

WIPO Proposes Supplementary International Patent Search

Posted on September 12, 2007
The WIPO General Assembly is likely to approve a supplementary international patent search, according to comments made by WIPO Deputy Director Francis Gurry quoted in IP Watch. This will allow applicants to request a supplemental search from another patent office other than a designated international search authority...

Downloading Foreign Patents

Posted on September 10, 2007
When I need to download a copy of a patent for myself or a client, I usually go right to esp@cenet. Since esp@cenet includes ~60 million patent documents from more than 70 countries, the odds of finding a patent or at least a family member are very good...