-
Recent Posts
Archives
Categories
Blogs I Follow
Meta
Author Archives: mjwhitekingston
Earthquake-proof Buildings
The 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan on March 11 is a massive natural disaster and human tragedy, but it could have been much worse. News reports have credited Japan`s strict building codes with saving countless lives. Thanks to Japanese engineering, … Continue reading
Posted in earthquakes, espacenet
Leave a comment
PatentScope Adds EPO Collection
The EPO patent document backfile, which includes bibliographic data from 1978 through mid-2010 and full-text data from 1996 through mid-2010, is now available in PatentScope. With this addition, the WIPO’s patent search system has 7.7 million patent documents from 21 regional … Continue reading
Posted in EPO, Patent databases, PatentScope, WIPO
Leave a comment
One Classification to Rule Them All?
The USPTO and EPO have agreed to create a new Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) based on the IPC. You can read the press releases here and here. The new system will be based largely on ECLA, the European version of the … Continue reading
Posted in classification, CPC, EPO, USPTO
Leave a comment
US Patent Counts, 2010
The USPTO issued 244,421 patents and published 333,210 applications in 2010, an all-time high of 577,631 patent documents. The number of patents issued in Q4 dropped to 61,037, a slight decrease from the previous quarter. The number of published applications … Continue reading
Posted in Patent statistics, USPTO
Leave a comment
Wikipedia References Increase 81 Percent in 2010
The number of US patents that cite Wikipedia increased again in 2010. Approximately 1,461 patents issued last year contain one or more references to Wikipedia articles, 81 percent more than in 2009. Although this is a tiny fraction of the … Continue reading
Posted in Patent references, Prior art, Wikipedia
Leave a comment
Gloves Off in Dispute Over Hockey Bag
Hockey fans will enjoy this story about two Canadian inventors suing a company for allegedly copying the design of their patented hockey equipment bag: Dropping the gloves over a hockey bag, Globe and Mail, Dec. 16, 2010. The bag is patented … Continue reading
Posted in Hockey, infringement, IP
Leave a comment
USPTO to Remove Inventor’s Mailing Address from Patent Docs
The USPTO will no longer include the inventor’s mailing address on unassigned patents and published applications because of privacy concerns. However, correspondence information will continue to be available in Public PAIR. Patent documents will only display the city and state … Continue reading
Posted in Assignments, inventors, patent documents, Privacy, USPTO
Leave a comment
AusPat beta Launched
IP Australia recently released a new version of its patent database, AusPat beta. The new version allows users to retrieve patent specifications from 1904 to the present. Approximately half of the 1.4 million AU patent specs have been loaded. The … Continue reading
Posted in AusPat, Australian patents, IP Australia, Patent databases
Leave a comment
PatentScope Adds Patents of Brazil
PatentScope now includes the national patent collection of Brazil. Data coverage begins in 1972 for bibliographic data and 1989 for abstracts. The total number of records is about 147,000.
Posted in Brazil, PatentScope, WIPO
Leave a comment
Patent Mystery: The Strange Case of 3,060,165
The recent discussion on the Intellogist blog about missing patent documents in the USPTO patent database reminded me of the curious case of patent no. 3,060,165. The full-text TIFF image of this patent was removed from the USPTO database sometime … Continue reading
Posted in Censorship, Secrecy orders
Leave a comment
Patent Librarian's Notebook 