Legal Research

As of January 2015, the Patent

Posted on February 19, 2015
As of January 2015, the Patent Librarian's Notebook has moved to WordPress at http://patentlibrarian.com/.

U.S. Patent Statistics and Numbers for 2013

Posted on December 31, 2013
The USPTO issued 305,081 patents in 2013, an increase of 10.2 percent over 2012. The agency also published 347,148 utility and plant patent applications, an increase of 4.7 percent over the previous year. The total number of U.S. patent documents published in 2013 increased to 752,229, another all-time high...

Tangle toy puzzle

Posted on December 29, 2013
A few days ago I took my four-year old daughter to get a flu shot. As a reward for being brave and not crying (too much) the nurse gave her a puzzle-toy called a Tangle(R). Turns out it was patented in 1985 (US 4509929) by Richard Zawitz. There are several interesting things about this toy...

Humble Egg Carton Invented by Canadian 100 Years Ago

Posted on December 29, 2013
Canadian newspaperman Joseph Coyle invented the humble egg carton nearly one hundred years ago. Coyle was not the first inventor to tackle the problem of transporting eggs safely, but his carton design, which he patented in the US (US1269394) and Canada (CA181662) in 1918, was one of the most successful...

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PatentScope Adds Canadian National Collection

Posted on December 19, 2013
An early Christmas present from the WIPO:PatentScopenow includes the Canadian national collection from ~1920 forward. No PDFs yet, it appears, but full text (based on OCR) is available for some patents. A few pre-1970s patents have IPC codes, so keyword searching may be required for some types of searches...

USPTO Adopts PDF for Patent Documents

Posted on August 26, 2013
The USPTO has adopted PDF as the default format for displaying patent documents from its databases, making it one of the last (if not last) of the major patent offices to switch to the world's most popular document image format. Since 1998, viewing US patent documents obtained from the USPTO website required the use of a TIFF plugin such as alternaTIFF or interneTIFF.

US Patent Milestone: 8,500,000

Posted on August 21, 2013
The USPTO reached another milestone on August 6, issuing patent no. 8,500,000 B2 to Elmer Berendas of Germany for a "Device for locking and unlocking the jalousie (rolling shutter) of a container."According to the patent, this type of container is commonly used in ATMs...

Obit: Amar G. Bose (1929-2013), Bose

Posted on July 23, 2013
Amar G. Bose, inventor of the audio system that bears his name, passed away on July 12 at the age of 84. In addition to being a successful inventor and entrepreneur, Bose taught acoustics and electrical engineering for 45 years at MIT. Bose received approximately 45 patents during his lifetime...

USPTO Launches Global Patent Search Network

Posted on July 09, 2013
The USPTO has launched a new patent search system called the Global Patent Search Network (GPSN). Initial coverage includes Chinese published applications, patents, utility models from 2008 through 2011. Users can search patent documents in the English or Chinese language and retrieve full-text Chinese patents and machine translations...

Roswell-Inspired Inventions

Posted on July 08, 2013
 UFO enthusiasts and true believers are celebrating the 66th anniversary of the Roswell Incident, the alleged crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft outside the small town of Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. The event marked the start of a wave of flying saucer sightings around the world...

Obit: Inventor of Computer Mouse, Douglas C. Engelbart

Posted on July 05, 2013
Douglas C. Engelbart, the inventor of the computer mouse, died this week at the age of 88. He patented his simple but highly innovative invention, called an "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System", in 1970. (US 3541541) Engelbart's invention helped launch the age of the personal computer...

Statutory Invention Registration Abolished

Posted on June 02, 2013
On March 16, 2013, the Statutory Invention Registration was abolished under the provisions of the America Invents Act. The purpose of the SIR was to allow an inventor who did not wish to get a patent to disclose their invention in a published document, thus preventing others from patenting it...

Patent Milestone in August?

Posted on June 02, 2013
The USPTO is on track to issue patent no. 8,500,000 later this summer. At the current rate of about five thousand new patents each week, no. 8,500,000 should appear sometime in August. Patent no. 8,000,000 was issued on August 16, 2011, just two years ago...

US Patent Statistics for 2012

Posted on January 28, 2013
The USPTO issued 276,820 patents and published 331,583 applications in calendar year 2012, 7 percent more than in 2011 and an all-time high of 608,403 patent documents.Table 1 shows the number of documents by type.No milestones were reached in 2012, but in 2013 it's virtually guaranteed that the USPTO will issue patent no...

Jury Awards Carnegie Mellon University $1.16 Billion in Patent Lawsuit

Posted on January 01, 2013
A jury has awarded Carnegie Mellon University more than $1.16 billion in a patent infringement lawsuit against a tech firm based in Santa Clara, California. An appeal is expected, but if the verdict stands this could be the largest patent infringement award in U...

China Leads US in Patent Applications

Posted on December 17, 2012
In 2011 China surpassed the US in patent application filings, according to data compiled by the World Intellectual Property Organization and reported in the Economist. The State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO) received 526,412 applications in 2011, compared to slightly more than 500,000 at the USPTO and approximately 340,000 at the Japan Patent Office...

Pfizer`s Viagra Patent Invalidated Due to Failure to Disclose

Posted on November 12, 2012
The Supreme Court of Canada has invalidate Pfizer's Canadian patent on Viagra, citing the drug-maker's failure to disclose essential information about the main ingredient, sildenafil citrate, in the original application, which was filed in 1994 and granted in 1998...

Swiss Patent Office Adopts CPC

Posted on October 19, 2012
As of Jan. 1, 2013, the Swiss Patent Office will classify patents using the CPC. This might be the first office (except for the EPO and USPTO) to officially adopt the CPC as its national classification.

Cooperative Patent Classification Available

Posted on October 03, 2012
The USPTO and EPO have released the new Cooperative Patent Classification system ahead of the January 1, 2013 implementation date. Details are available at the CPC website. Documentation includes the entire CPC scheme, an initial set of definitions and CPC concordances.

New: FreePatentsOnline Adds DE Patent Data, Other Resources

Posted on September 14, 2012
FreePatentsOnline has updated its interface and added some new resources. One of the most interesting developments is the addition of German patent data. Other new features include blogs, a version of the MPEP and a case law database containing Federal appellate cases referenced in the MPEP.

PatentScope Has JP Data

Posted on August 09, 2012
Japanese patent documents are now available in PatentScope. The JP national collection is the 29th added to the system and includes more than 3 million records from January 2004 through July 2012. New data will be added weekly.JP documents can be searched by number or IPC classification...

Canadian Invents Device to Help Cystic Fibrosis Patients Breath

Posted on July 10, 2012
Interesting story about a Canadian man suffering from cystic fibrosis who patented a device that helps him breath. His patents for a "chest vibrating device" include US7416536 (B2) and CA2563723 (C)...

Happy 4th of July!

Posted on July 04, 2012
Tonight millions of Americans will enjoy firework shows in celebration of Independence Day. Millions more may even set off a few firecrackers and bottle rockets in their backyards. Many of these pyrotechnics can trace their origins to designs patented decades ago...

RIM's Troubles and Canadian Patents

Posted on July 04, 2012
Reports of RIM's demise may be premature but the company's precarious situation might be a concern for officials at the Canadian Intellectual Property Office. For the better part of a decade, RIM has been one of CIPO's best customers; since 2005-2006 it has consistently ranked as the top patent applicant in Canada...

USPTO satellite offices; European patent moves forward

Posted on July 04, 2012
Big patent news from Europe and the US:The USPTO is planning to open three new satellite offices in Dallas, Denver and Silicon Valley, bringing the total number of regional offices to four. The first USPTO satellite office will open in Detroit on July 13...

World Cities Ranked by Patent Productivity

Posted on March 29, 2011
Today's Globe and Mail published an interesting list of 24 cities ranked by the number of U.S. patents per 100,000 population. The top ranked Canadian city was Vancouver (11th), followed by Toronto (12th), Calgary (13th), Montreal (15th) and Halifax (20th)...

FPO Adds Non-Patent Literature Collection

Posted on March 12, 2011
FreePatentsOnline (FPO) has added a full-text collection of non-patent literature to its suite of patent databases. Not much is stated about the collection, but according to the copyright notice that appears in each record it appears to be sourced from Gale Cengage Learning, a producer of full-text and bibliographic databases...

Earthquake-proof Buildings

Posted on March 12, 2011
The 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan on March 11 is a massive natural disaster and human tragedy, but it could have been much worse. News reports have credited Japan`s strict building codes with saving countless lives. Thanks to Japanese engineering, thousands of buildings and other structures survived the initial earthquake and numerous aftershocks...

PatentScope Adds EPO Collection

Posted on March 12, 2011
The EPO patent document backfile, which includes bibliographic data from 1978 through mid-2010 and full-text data from 1996 through mid-2010, is now available in PatentScope. With this addition, the WIPO's patent search system has 7.7 million patent documents from 21 regional and national patent offices...

One Classification to Rule Them All?

Posted on February 08, 2011
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 IPC, but incorporate the best practices of the U...

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