Category Archives: Uncategorized

Government Computer News has a report on the success of the USPTO’s new e-filing system, EFS-Web. Since the system went into full product in March 2006, the USPTO has: Seen new applications filed electronically rise to 60 percent Received 850,000 … Continue reading →

Despite the proliferation of open access patent databases over the last ten years, chemists and life scientists have found it difficult to search for patents related to chemical compounds. This is largely due to the fact that patent offices do … Continue reading →

The Economist tackles perpetual motion machines in an article appropriately titled “Perptual Nonesense“. It should be noted that inventors have been pursuing this dream since the beginning of our patent system. Here’s what one patent attorney thought about it a … Continue reading →

Some exciting news about Patent Lens, one of my favourite patent databases… Patent Lens now includes bibliographic data and full-text images for Australian A and B docs from 1998 to the present. As far as I can tell, this is … Continue reading →

During a recent vacation in Hawaii, my wife and I had the pleasure of visiting the beautiful ‘Iolani Palace, the official residence of Hawaiian monarchs in the late 1800s and the only royal residence on U.S. territory. The building was … Continue reading →

I enjoy movies about inventors and the process of invention. Many are fun family movies, such as The Absent Minded Professor and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Others lionize inventors, such as Young Thomas Edison and Edison, the Man, both released … Continue reading →

The Globe and Mail’s popular “Social Studies” column often reports interesting facts about famous inventors and inventions. Today’s column include a few lines about the inventor of sliced bread, Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa. Until the late 1920s, virtually … Continue reading →

Plant patents don’t usually get much attention in the news, so I was delighted to see a short well-written article on plant patents in the June 2007 issue of Lee Valley & Veritas gardening newsletter. Lee Valley & Veritas is … Continue reading →

Italian designer Gianfranco Ferre died yesterday from an apparent massive brain hemorrhage. He was 62. He achieved international fame during his career at Christian Dior, where he was top designer from 1989-1996. Fashion designers work in the space between art … Continue reading →

Two recent studies suggest that patents have a key role to play in raising state per capita incomes and overcoming persistent poverty. A working paper published almost a year ago by two staffers of the Federal Bank of Cleveland and … Continue reading →