Top 5 Intellogist Posts of 2011

 It’s certainly been a busy year for the Intellogist Blog…between the controversial changes to Google Patents, the release of a major new file history tool, the plethora of free patent and non-patent search tools, an eye-opening interview with Marla Grossman, and the tragic deaths of Andy Rooney and Google Labs,  I’ve hardly had time to catch my breath.  I’ve only been with the Intellogist Blog during 2011, but what a year 2011 has turned out to be.  Read on as I take a look at the top 5 most-viewed Intellogist blog posts of 2011, and ring in the New Year Intellogist-style!

1. Godly Powers: A Mystical US Patent Application - Christopher Anthony Roller submitted a patent application to gain exclusive rights to his godly powers, and he certainly made some convincing arguments throughout his correspondence with the USPTO.  A visit to the public PAIR portal yielded an Image File Wrapper with some interesting content: a comparison of godly powers to business method and software patents, a lawsuit against David Copperfield, and a rather exasperated non-final rejection.

2. Free Bulk Patent Download Solutions Compared - In this useful post, Chris Jagalla compares the utility of a number of free bulk patent download options, including Espacenet, SumoBrain, PAT2PDF, Patent Retriever,  and poxoq for patents. Chris compares the download features and patent document coverage of each system, and a rather surprising underdog application comes out on top as the “best all-around free bulk downloading solution.”

3. The Literature Search Secrets of U.S. Patent Examiners - What types of resources do USPTO Examiners search when they investigate a new patent application?  Kristin Whitman sheds some light on the mystery by describing the USPTO Search Templates, available for free on the USPTO website, where users can search templates by US Class/Subclass.  Kristin describes some of the problems with the lists of databases recommended in the templates, and she also explains how the Intellogist Resource Finder was designed to overcome many of these issues.

4.  How is Exalead Better Than Google? - Exalead is a free online search system with some features that just may give Google a run for its money: advanced search options entered directly into the search form, filters, related terms, and thumbnails in search results, thumbnail bookmarks, and Exalead Desktop.

5. Free Patent Search Sites: US Patents and Applications - This post describes some alternatives to searching for US patent documents for free on the USPTO website, FreePatentsOnline or Google Patents.  Patent Genius, PatentStorm, and Patents.com are three free online search sites where users can search issued US patents (and applications, on PatentStorm and Patents.com).  Read about the pros and cons of each search tool, as well as any notable special features.

Look back through the past posts from 2011, and let us know which blog post was your favorite!  Thanks for reading the Intellogist Blog, and have a Happy New Year!

This post was contributed by Joelle Mornini. The Intellogist blog is provided for free by Intellogist’s parent company Landon IP, a major provider of patent searches, trademark searches, technical translations, and information retrieval services.

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