Category Archives: USPTO

USPTO Public Training Portal @ NTIS

Posted on July 15, 2011 by mjwhitekingston

NTIS is now offering public access to USPTO training materials used to train patent examiners and trademark attorneys. The catalogue includes about 70 modules of varying lengths.

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PAIR Enhancement: Display References

Posted on July 7, 2011 by mjwhitekingston

The USPTO has enhanced its PAIR system (Patent Application Information Retrieval) by adding a tab for cited references under which is listed all references cited by the examiner and application, including patents and NPL (non-patent literature) documents. Cited US and … Continue reading →

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US Patent Counts, Q1 2011

Posted on April 28, 2011 by mjwhitekingston

In the first quarter of 2011 the USPTO issued 62,132 patents, an increase of 1.7 percent from the previous quarter and 11.9 percent from the same period last year. The number of published applications declined by 4 percent from the … Continue reading →

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One Classification to Rule Them All?

Posted on February 8, 2011 by mjwhitekingston

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 →

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US Patent Counts, 2010

Posted on February 8, 2011 by mjwhitekingston

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 →

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USPTO to Remove Inventor’s Mailing Address from Patent Docs

Posted on December 16, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

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 →

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How Complete is the USPTO Patent Database?

Posted on October 18, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

There was an interesting discussion last week on the Intellogist blog about the number of allegedly missing patent documents in the USPTO’s PatFT database. Of course, this is an important question for anyone who uses the database, but especially for … Continue reading →

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U.S. Patent Counts, Q3

Posted on October 14, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

The USPTO issued 63,859 patents from July 1 through Sept. 30, a fraction less than the previous quarter but a large increase over last year’s Q3 total of 47,042. Published applications set another record with nearly 90,000 released, a 17 … Continue reading →

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Green Tech Program

Posted on April 24, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

Scientific American reports that the USPTO has approved only one third of the requests filed under its new “Green Tech” examination pilot program.

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Wikipedia Not an Authoritative Source, Judges Tell Govt. Officials

Posted on April 24, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

Several Canadian judges have criticized immigration officials for citing Wikipedia articles in decisions to deport or deny entrance to foreigners. (Judges rap Wiki-evidence… Globe and Mail, Apr. 21) This is the most recent case of government agents using the online … Continue reading →

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