Patent Librarian's Notebook

Have you ever looked at a wacky patent and wondered if it really could work?

Discovery Channel Canada aims to find out in a new series premiering in August called “Patent Bending: Mad Ideas and Modern Science.” The 11-episode series looks at patents from the past 100 years to find and build the “greatest, strangest or most fantastically odd ideas that never got off the page.”

The inventions include:

Bicycle Lawnmower – Tues, Aug. 22 at 8:30 p.m.
Floating Tent – Tues., Aug. 29 at 8:30 p.m.
12-Gauge Golf Club – Tues., Sept. 5 at 8:30 p.m.
Helmet Bar – Tues., Sept. 12 at 8:30 p.m.
Chute ‘N Shoes – Tues., Sept. 19 at 8:30 p.m.
Human Carwash – Tues., Sept. 26 at 8:30 p.m.
The Mancatcher – Tues., Oct. 3 at 8:30 p.m.
Motorized Picnic Table – Tues., Oct. 10 at 8:30 p.m.
The Baby Show – Tues., Oct. 17 at 8:30 p.m.
The Better Mousetrap – Tues., Oct. 24 at 8:30 p.m.
Uphill Skis – Tues., Oct. 31 at 8:30 p.m.

Patent Lens, a free international patent database maintained by CAMBIA, a non-profit research institute located in Caberra, Australia, now has RSS capability. Once saved in an RSS news reader such as Bloglines, searches conducted in Patent Lens will be periodically checked for new patents and will alert you of new “hits”.

Patent Lens contains 4.3 million US patent documents, 268,000 EP patents, 538,000 PCT applications and 10,000 Australian patents.

The dates for the 4th annual IPI-ConfEx have been announced. The meeting will take place March 4-8, 2007 in Sorrento, Italy. IPI-ConfEx is organized by a board of counselers representing various patent information professional associations worldwide. The conference is an opportunity for professionals in the field of patent information to meet and discuss patent searching, patent information management and the latest developments in patent information products.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office recently announced the availability of patent file payment histories on CD-ROM. Copies of the CD, which contains approximately 4 million payment history records from 445,000 patent documents through Dec. 31, 2005, may be obtained from the CIPO’s Client Service Centre.

CIPO also announced the successful implementation of IPC-2006. CIPO began loading IPC symbols of Canadian patent documents from the European Patent Office’s Master Classification Database (MCD) on Jan. 7, 2006.

Source: CIPO News Updates, July 10, 2006.

Discovery Channel Canada’s Daily Planet, a news program about science and technology, recently celebrated “Invention Week.”

Featured inventions included colored bubbles, aka “Zubbles”, (US2006/0004110A1) and other cool ideas from the U.S. and Canada. Aspiring inventors will find a few useful tips in the brief “Inventor’s Guide: From Blueprint to Patent.”

The program for the 2006 EPO Patent Information Conference, scheduled for Nov. 6-7 in Cyprus, is now online. The conference will feature technical sessions, specialized training course and an exhibition of patent information products.

Photo: Patent searching circa 1960. Searchers (junior patent attorneys most likely) flip through stacks of paper patents in metal troughs located in the Patent Search Room.

The IP Mall, an online resource center for intellectual property information provided by the Pierce Law Center in Concord, NH, has digitized a fascinating collection of Patent Office Research and Development Reports from the 1950s and 1960s. The reports describe the Patent Office’s early attempts at “mechanizing” or automating patent searching using coding schemes and early “punched card” computers.

Photo source: How to Obtain Information from United States Patents, Washington, DC: U.S. Patent Office, 1964.

The USPTO has published Classification Order 1,855, dated May 2, 2006. The order affects subclasses in Class 439, Electrical Connectors; it abolishes subclasses 620-622 and establishes 620.01-620.34.

The latest issue of ipFrontline has an interesting article called “The PTO’s Document Disclosure Program: Boon or Boondoggle,” by former patent examiner Thomas G. Field.

The USPTO is currently seeking public comment on a proposal to eliminate the program. See the Federal Register April 6, 2006, vol. 71, p. 17399. This is the third time since 1998 that the agency has proposed eliminating the 27-year old program.

USPTO’s Disclosure Document Program brochure.