USPTO Collaborates With Korea and Japan Patent Offices on Patent Search

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has signed two separate Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO) for a new pilot program designed to share prior art search information with patent applicants before the actual examination of the patent application begins. The MOCs were signed at a bilateral meeting during the IP5 Heads Meeting in Suzhou, China. More about the pilot program after the break!

Japan Patent Office Releases J-Plat Pat

The Japan Platform for Patents (J-Plat Pat) is a new patent searching platform launched by the Japan Patent Office (JPO) that is designed to offer patent information including Japanese utility models, design and trademark data to aid in intellectual property strategy building. The platform is a successor to the Industrial Property Digital Library (IPDL) service which has now been discontinued by the JPO. The service comes in both English and Japanese language versions. Read on for an in-depth look at J-Plat Pat.

An Incredible Free Patent Citation Search and Analysis Tool: The CCD

[tweetmeme source=”Intellogist” only_single=false] Citation search and analysis tools are available in many subscription patent databases; PatBase allows users to view both patent and non-patent literature citations for entire patent families, and users can view the citations graphically through “citation trees.” A July 2011 update to PatBase added the additional features of a citation timeline and citation line graph.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there was a patent citation tool, with similar functions to the PatBase citation features, that was also free?  Thanks to the EPO, JPO, and USPTO, such a tool now exists.  The Common Citation Document (CCD) allows users to view documents cited by the EPO, USPTO, JPO, and PCT citations for patent families related to a specific patent application.  The CCD application includes the capability to view full-text of cited patent documents, the division of cited documents in a list by source of citation and connection to a specific patent application, the category of relevance for EPO citations,  a compilation of “classifications and fields searched” for an entire patent family, and a timeline view to illustrate the time span for a collection of citations.

Read on for a detailed description of the coverage, features, and functions of the CCD application!

How I Wrapped my Mind Around The Japanese F-Term

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When I first started learning about patent searches after coming to Landon IP, one of the most difficult concepts for me to grasp was the Japanese F-term classification system. I was used to hierarchical classification systems, so I didn’t have much trouble with the Japanese File Index (which expands on the IPC). I was thrown for a loop, though, when I first saw the F-term lists at the Industrial Property Digital Library. These weren’t standard lists; these were tables with  dozens of rows and  columns.  One F-term theme code (e.g. 4D006) can have multiple terms codes (e.g. GA, HA, JA, etc), and each term code can have multiple dependent term codes (e.g. GA00, GA01, GA02, etc.). Add the extension codes at the end, which “apply to each and every viewpoint under that theme code,” and you have a very confusing classification system. According to the Intellogist glossary page on F-terms and the F-Index, “there are around 1,800 theme codes, and 350,000 terms codes contained within the F-term classification system.” How can this extremely specific classification system, which looks at a theme from every possible viewpoint, be used? Do you apply a single, very specific F-term to a patent, or do you apply a broad theme code and all dependent term codes to it? I couldn’t escape from the hierarchical classification mindset.

I tried reading everything I could in order to understand the F-term. I read the glossary page on Intellogist and Kristin Whitman’s insightful blog post on F-terms. Still, nothing worked. Finally, I asked Chris Jagalla if he could try explaining the concept to me.  He gave me a brilliant comparison that finally helped me understand  F-terms. Read on to learn about my path from confusion to enlightenment!

Unified Patent Classification One Step Closer to Reality

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In an effort under the IP5 forum (Five IP Offices) banner, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have agreed to move forward on jointly developing a unified patent classification system based on the European Classification system (ECLA). The EPO was tasked with the project of Common Hybrid Classification as one of the ten IP5 projects. We previously covered the Common Search and Examination Support Tools project under the USPTO’s stewardship from the same forum. For more on what this joint patent classification system could mean, read on!