New ECLA Codes for Green Technologies

Posted on June 9, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

The European Patent Office has created a new classification scheme for green technologies and applications related to the mitigation of climate change. The new category, identified as Y02 in the ECLA classification, has two main subclasses:

* Y02C – CAPTURE, STORAGE, SEQUESTRATION OR DISPOSAL OF GREENHOUSE
GASES [GHG]
* Y02E – REDUCTION OF GREENHOUSE GASES [GHG] EMISSION, RELATED TO
ENERGY GENERATION, TRANSMISSION OR DISTRIBUTION [N1006]

Each subclass is further subdivided into dozens of sub-groups. There are about 17,000 patents classified in Y02 but more will appear in the coming weeks.

Posted in ECLA, environment, espacenet, green technology | Leave a comment

Google Hosts Bulk USPTO Patent Data

Posted on June 3, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

The USPTO and Google have entered a two-year agreement to allow Google to provide bulk patent and trademark data to the public, according to a USPTO press release dated June 2.

The agreement requires Google to host the data at no charge and without modification. It appears that the data is being offered in weekly segments, at least for the last ten years or so. Older data (pre-1996) is offered in yearly files.

This is a great day for public access to patent information, especially for people who want to mine patent data or build large patent databases. I’m not sure how useful it will be for average users who might want to download a much smaller, targeted set of data.

Posted in Patent databases, patent information dissemination | Leave a comment

US Assignment Data in INPADOC

Posted on May 20, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

The EPO recently announced that US assignment data will be updated weekly instead of bimonthly in the INPADOC legal status database, which also means that it will be available via esp@cenet.

The data will be captured from the USPTO’s assignment database one week after it is posted.

This is a much appreciated improvement. It will save searchers a lot of time switching back and forth between esp@cenet/INPADOC and the USPTO database.

Posted in Assignments, espacenet, INPADOC | Leave a comment

Canadian Inventor/Designer Robert Dickie

Posted on April 30, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

The Globe and Mail‘s business magazine has an interesting profile of Canadian inventor and industrial designer Robert G. Dickie. (“The Business of Brainstorms“, April 29) Dickie’s firm, Spark Innovations, is responsible for designing dozens of products ranging from electric toothbrushes to medical devices. He has 51 Canadian patents and published applications, 84 US patents and 62 published applications, and has filed dozens more around the world. He also has some unconventional ideas on what makes a successful invention and inventor.

Posted in Canada, inventors | Leave a comment

10th World IP Day and New Logo for WIPO

Posted on April 26, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

Today is the 10th anniversary of World Intellectual Property Day and the 40th anniversary of the WIPO.

In celebration, WIPO has adopted a new logo. It’s the first time the logo has been changed since the organization was established in 1970.

Although some people will probably complain that the new logo is too “corporate”, I think it’s a definite improvement over the old one, which was cluttered… And what was the deal with the big star anyway? It always reminded me of a Soviet military medal.

Posted in WIPO, World IP Day | Leave a comment

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.


Posted in USPTO | Leave a comment

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 collaborative encyclopedia as an authoritative source.

In 2006 the USPTO ordered patent examiners not to use Wikipedia as a source of prior art information, but the number of patents that cite Wikipedia has continued to increase. (Many references are provided by applicants.) In the first four months of 2010, 348 issued patents contained references to wikipedia articles, a 27 percent increase over the same period last year.

Posted in Prior art, USPTO, Wikipedia | Leave a comment

Chinese Patent Number System

Posted on April 20, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

According to a note on the EPO’s Asian Patent Helpdesk, the Chinese patent office has adopted a new numbering scheme for published applications and issued patents. Prior to April 2010, applications and patents were published with different numbers. The new system uses the same number for both stages with the appropriate document kind code, e.g. A, A8 and A9 for published applications and B, B8 and B9 for granted patents.

Posted in China, patent numbers, SIPO | Leave a comment

Reporting Data Errors in Patent Databases

Posted on April 16, 2010 by mjwhitekingston


Kudos to esp@cenet for providing an easy and convenient way for users to report data errors. Each record includes a link to an error reporting form; all you have to do is click and fill in a few lines. This week I reported my first error (an incorrect application number and date) and within two days the record was updated.

Why don’t more patent offices do this? Patent databases are teeming with errors. You’d think they would take advantage of the tens of thousands of users who use their databases every day.

The USPTO provides an e-mail for reporting data errors but it’s located on a page outside the database, which means that you have to stop your search, open up a new window, find the page and then compose an e-mail. Very cumbersome.

I wasn’t able to find any way to report an error in the WIPO’s PatentScope. The CIPO’s Canadian Patent Database includes the e-mail and telephone number for the Client Service Centre in each record, but it doesn’t make it clear that you can or should report errors.

Posted in data errors, espacenet, Patent databases | Leave a comment

New University Patents Database

Posted on April 16, 2010 by mjwhitekingston

FreePatentsOnline has partnered with Technology Transfer Tactics, a website for university tech transfer professionals, to provide a resource for searching university-owned patents.

Data for about 150 universities (mostly American) is available. Clicking on a name of a university will retrieve a list of US patents and published applications assigned to that university.

The number retrieved may be different from what you retrieve in a manual search. For example, the link for Johns Hopkins University retrieved 1,766 documents, but I was able to retrieve 1,950 documents in FPO using the search query an/”johns hopkins”. The same search in the USPTO databases retrieved 1,852 documents. It’s not clear why this is so, but it may be because the data in the university patent search is not in sync with the live FPO database.

Posted in academic patents, FreePatentsOnline, universities | Leave a comment