The Literature Search Secrets of U.S. Patent Examiners

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Patent attorneys and applicants would love to know what material the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)  Examiners will be searching when they investigate new patent applications.   Wouldn’t it be great if, in addition to checking the Intellogist Resource Finder, we had a sneak peek at a list of all the USPTO’s subscription databases?  And wouldn’t it be even better if we could see which databases are best for which US patent classifications?  Well, I have good news.  This information is all free on the web, in the USPTO Search Templates!  Read on to find out more about how to see this “secret” (yet very public) information.

Interview with Marla Grossman: The Future of Patent Information

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Today we’re proud to bring you an extensive and fascinating interview with Marla Grossman, the Executive Director of the Coalition for Patent and Trademark Information Dissemination. We discuss a range of topics related to patent information and the US patent system that we know you’ll enjoy.

Marla Grossman joined American Continental Group in 2010 and brings a reputation for being one of the nation’s preeminent IP and technology lobbyists. Through her wide network of contacts in the Washington community and across the country, she has worked with a diverse portfolio of clients, including associations and Fortune 500® technology, health care, financial and traditional manufacturing companies. She brings ACG’s clients expertise in strategic public policy planning and representation before federal agencies and Congress.

Before joining ACG, Ms. Grossman was a partner at PCT Government relations, a consulting firm focused on IP and technology government relations matters. Prior to that, Ms. Grossman was a partner at the law firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand (now part of DLA Piper US LLP), where she headed the Internet Ventures Practice Group.

Ms. Grossman has lectured extensively on IP, technology and entertainment issues and has served as a guest lecturer at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government from 1995-2000. Ms. Grossman received her J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, and a B.A., summa cum laude, from Yale University (Phi Beta Kappa). She is admitted to the Maryland and District of Columbia bars.

Why might the USPTO be headed down a dangerous path with regards to data quality? What’s the best path forward for patent office collaboration? Will the USPTO get the funding it needs? Read on to find out!

Patent News Sources: Patent Information News from the EPO

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The patent information industry is a swift and deep river of information. There’s so much new info every day that one needs to come up with a plan just to stay abreast of the state of the profession. On the other hand, each distinct topic and subtopic could be delved into for days to years at a time. Consider Alien Property Custodian documents or F-Index/F-Terms — both subjects that are steeped in patent history and varying degrees of present-day relevance that can help one understand this industry.

With that in mind, in addition to Intellogist, it helps to have a variety of current awareness sources at hand with which to better navigate this information river.

Today I’ll be telling you a little bit about the Patent Information News publication from the European Patent Office (EPO). I’ll tell you what it comprises and why you should be following this free information source. Read on as we examine the Patent Information News!

Gear Grinder #4.5: Children and Patents

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Introductory Note: Welcome back to “Gear Grinder with Danny Rooney.” This week we have Danny’s chipper cousin Stevie to fill in. We aim to bring this series to you on the first and third Thursdays of the month. Here are our previous installments: #1, #2, #3, and #4. This post is based on a fictitious character!

Like our distant cousin Wayne, Danny Rooney’s been suspended this week for getting his gears ground a little too hard and dropping some choice swear-bombs on the unassuming children across the world.

In his place I, Stevie Rooney, will be bringing you something to smile about regarding the patent world. Inspired by a blog post I saw about a child’s reaction to finding out that their parent was a patent researcher, today I’ll be talking about the USPTO’s fun website designed to educate kids about the world of intellectual property. Read on for the antidote to being grumpy at work!

5 Reasons Why I’m Passionate About Patent Classification

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Yesterday, while having a conversation about a related subject and without much prompting, I went on a several minute filibuster about the future of unified patent classification. The main prompt for this tangent was the latest news (hat tip to The Patent Librarian Blog for the short and sweet PR roundup) that indicates progress toward the new Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system between the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the European Patent Office (EPO). However, I can’t attribute all of my enthusiasm to the latest news cycle–I had to admit that I’m just a nerd about patent classification. Let me explain why…

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!

Warning: your electronic patent search databases have gaps!

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UPDATE: For a further enlightening discussion of the gaps in the USPTO full text database, please see the comment section of this post (click the word “Comments” where it appears at the very end of this post).

Recently, a message came over Carl Oppedahl’s PAIR discussion list highlighting a mysterious gap in the USPTO’s online patent database: data seemed to be missing for patent numbers between 6,363,527 and 6,412,112.

Rick Neifeld, of Neifeld IP Law, responded that his 1999 survey into the PTO’s data revealed many errors in the USPTO’s data, as many of us have probably suspected for some time.  Rick’s description of these errors is very interesting:

The dirt consisted of things as minor as numerous misspellings of assignee names, or HTML pages non compliant with HTML standards, to HTML text that could not be deconstructed into component sections due to HTML formatting errors, assignment records that were combined, corrupt, unreadable.

I absolutely expect our current crop of electronic patent database to contain massive numbers of errors. We have to expect this, if only because of the sheer amount of information involved.   Another reason might be that the economic model of patent data production does not really encourage the national patent offices to maintain high quality electronic patent data. There are millions and millions of patent documents pouring out of government-run institutions (without a profit motive for perfection), and errors are bound to be rampant.

Searching USPTO Assignments on the Web

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Acquiring correct assignment data can necessitate more effort than just looking at the assignment field in your favorite patent search system or on the face of the patent in question. If you choose either of these paths, just like peering through a telescope at the night sky, you could be seeing “yesterday’s news.”

There are several avenues of inquiry suggested to find out what your assignment searches might be missing, so let’s talk about one specific way to improve them today–searching USPTO Assignments on the Web.

USPTO Assignments on the Web is a free patent assignment information tool through the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s website. This tool has assignment data from August 1980 through the present, and users can query several fields of information. Read on to find out how to access assignment information using this site and how it can help your patent search!

Using USPTO Public PAIR Part 2

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Previously, I showed how to access USPTO PAIR to examine public records of a patent application’s prosecution as well as identify any related US patent documents. PAIR is an important part of any prior art searcher’s tool belt because the US patent system is such a large store of information and PAIR gives users limited access to the inner-workings of that store, providing info on related documents that a given search system may not have as well as making available the file history which contains a treasure trove of information that can be mined for help on your search.

As commenter Mike pointed out on our last post, the file histories on PAIR are not searchable (or in one file, even). This problem can be rectified by learning to look in the right place or better yet, by acquiring a fully searchable file history from a third party. Landon IP offers patent file histories with fully searchable and bookmarked contents (disclaimer: Landon IP is the parent company of Intellogist). Additionally, Landon IP checks the accuracy of every page, notifies you of papers or pages that are missing from the master file, directs your attention to important papers and attachments and drafts a professional file cover that identifies all of the references that were considered by the examiner.

Using USPTO Public PAIR Part 1

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USPTO PAIR (the United States Patent and Trademark Office Patent Application Information Retrieval – boy that’s a mouthful) is a free site where users can check on the status of US patent applications and gain access to the correspondence documents between the applicant and the patent examiner (also called the file history or the file wrapper). Today I’ll show you how to access PAIR to to start gleaning information that can help you on a prior art search by exposing the inner workings of patent prosecution. In additional installments I’ll delve into specific documents within the file history.