2008 Inductees to National Inventors Hall of Fame

Posted on February 17, 2008 by mjwhitekingston


The USPTO and National Inventors Hall of Fame (Akron, Ohio) have announced the 2008 inductees into the NIHF. The seven living inventors inducted are:

The inductees will be honoured in an official ceremony on May 3.

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Google Patents Update

Posted on February 13, 2008 by mjwhitekingston

Google Patents now includes US published applications and patents through at least the end of 2007. Google engineers have added a filter to the advanced search form that allows you to retrieve only issued patents or applications. However, there are still numerous problems with the search engine. For example, it is not possible to retrieve published applications by number. And classification searching is very problematic. A search on USPC 903/906 retrieved only 5 hits in Google but 417 hits in the USPTO databases. A search for inventor name “Mihal Lazaridis” retrieved 62 patents (with the “issued patents” filter on) and 81 published applications (with the “applications” filter on) for a total of 143 documents; the same search with not filter retrieved only 137 documents.

Posted in Google patents, Patent databases | 2 Comments

Manual of Patent Examining Procedure Online

Posted on February 13, 2008 by mjwhitekingston

The USPTO has made available scanned copies of all editions and revisions of the Manual of Patenting Examining Procedure (MPEP) from 1948 forward. Previously, only the most recent editions were available online. This collection will be useful for locating historical information on US patent documentation, numbering systems, classification and prior art rules.

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PatentMonkey Update

Posted on February 12, 2008 by mjwhitekingston

The patent search portal PatentMonkey.com, which I reviewed last February, has been acquired by Patents.com, a new firm headed by venture capitalist Robert Monster, PatentMonkey founder Paul Ratcliffe and Steve Pinkos, former deputy undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and deputy director of the the USPTO from 2004-2007. According to the Patents.com website, the new service will “provide the most comprehensive worldwide source of patent data – to include 450 million searchable indexed patent pages available in 15 native languages.” The launch is anticipated in the first quarter of 2008.

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2007 Top U.S. Patent Assignees from ISIClaims

Posted on January 21, 2008 by mjwhitekingston

Last week IFIClaims, a patent information company owned by Walters Kluwer Health , released its annual list of top U.S. patent assignees for 2007. According to the report, the USPTO issued 157,284 utility patents last year, a decline of about 10 percent from 2006. The top ten assignees (out of 35 listed) are:

1. IBM ….. 3,148
2. Samsung ….. 2,725
3. Canon ….. 1,987
4. Matsushita Elec. Ind. Co. ….. 1,941
5. Intel ….. 1,865
6. Microsoft ….. 1,637
7. Toshiba ….. 1,549
8. Sony ….. 1,481
9. Micron ….. 1,476
10. Hewlett-Packard ….. 1,470

Posted in IFIClaims, Patent statistics | 1 Comment

IPI-ConfEx 2008 – International Patent Information Conference

Posted on January 20, 2008 by mjwhitekingston


The final program for IPI-ConfEx 2008, an international patent information conference, is now available online. IPI-ConfEx is scheduled for March 2-5 in Seville, Spain and will feature a of presentations from EPO and WIPO staff, patent information vendors and corporate patent searchers. The conference is organized by a number of European patent information associations.

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Fictional Brands

Posted on January 20, 2008 by mjwhitekingston

Last Sunday’s Toronto Star had an interesting story about fictional brands from film and literature that have inspired real-life products. Some examples include HOLIDAY INN hotels, said to have been inspired by the 1942 Bing Crosby movie of the same name, and BRAWNDO energy drink, a fake brand from Mike Judge’s 2006 film Idiocracy. There’s even a term describing this phenomena: “defictionalization”.

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Infringement = Triple Word Score

Posted on January 20, 2008 by mjwhitekingston

An AP story reports that Hasbro and Mattel, makers of Scrabble(R), are unhappy with an unauthorized online version of the game called Scrabulous. The companies, which share worldwide rights to the boardgame, have sent cease-and-desist letters to the two brothers from India who created the online version which is very popular on Facebook.

According to the official Scrabble(R) website, the first version of the game, called Lexico, was invented in 1931 by an unemployed architect named Alfred Mosher Butts. Unfortunately, his repeated attempts in the 1930s to secure a patent on the game and license it to Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley all ended in failure. In the mid-1940s, James and Helen Brunot of Newtown, Conn., who had acquired one of Butts’ homemade sets, entered into a partnership with Butts to market a redesigned, simpler version of the game. The trademark Scrabble was registered on December 16, 1948. (Reg. 524,505) The Brunots patented an improvement to the game in 1956. (US2,752,158)

Hasbro owns the Scrabble trademarks and copyrights in North America; Mattel in the rest of the world.

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Public PAIR Verification System

Posted on January 12, 2008 by mjwhitekingston

The USPTO has implemented a new verification system for users accessing Public PAIR (Patent Application Information Retrieval). Users must now enter a two-word verification code in order to access the system. The system is meant to block bots and spiders. Launched in mid-2003, Public PAIR contains bibliographic data, legal status and prosecution history information and facsimilie images of file wrapper documents for published applications and issued patents.

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Everyday Edisons – Season 3

Posted on January 8, 2008 by mjwhitekingston

Everyday Edisons, a show about inventing that debuted on PBS last year, has announced its casting calls for season 3. The first casting call will be in Atlanta on Jan. 12. Other cities in the schedule include San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago and Boston. This is a great show for students and inventors who want to learn more about bringing products to market.

Posted in education, Everyday Edisons, inventors, PBS | Leave a comment