Legal Research

US Patent Counts, 2010

Posted on February 08, 2011
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 also declined in Q4 to 81,787...

Wikipedia References Increase 81 Percent in 2010

Posted on January 02, 2011
The number of US patents that cite Wikipedia increased again in 2010. Approximately 1,461 patents issued last year contain one or more references to Wikipedia articles, 81 percent more than in 2009. Although this is a tiny fraction of the total number of patents issued (roughly half a percent), it is still an impressive increase...

Gloves Off in Dispute Over Hockey Bag

Posted on December 16, 2010
Hockey fans will enjoy this story about two Canadian inventors suing a company for allegedly copying the design of their patented hockey equipment bag: Dropping the gloves over a hockey bag, Globe and Mail, Dec. 16, 2010.The bag is patented in Canada (CA 2145612) and the US (US 5,797,612)...

USPTO to Remove Inventor's Mailing Address from Patent Docs

Posted on December 16, 2010
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 for US inventors or the city and country for non-US residents...

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AusPat beta Launched

Posted on December 08, 2010
IP Australia recently released a new version of its patent database, AusPat beta. The new version allows users to retrieve patent specifications from 1904 to the present. Approximately half of the 1.4 million AU patent specs have been loaded. The complete collection is expected to be available in March 2011...

PatentScope Adds Patents of Brazil

Posted on November 06, 2010
PatentScope now includes the national patent collection of Brazil. Data coverage begins in 1972 for bibliographic data and 1989 for abstracts. The total number of records is about 147,000.

Patent Mystery: The Strange Case of 3,060,165

Posted on November 05, 2010
The recent discussion on the Intellogist blog about missing patent documents in the USPTO patent database reminded me of the curious case of patent no. 3,060,165. The full-text TIFF image of this patent was removed from the USPTO database sometime in 2003...

EPO and USPTO Agree to Develop New Patent Classification

Posted on October 26, 2010
Yesterday the EPO and USPTO announced that they have agreed to jointly develop a patent classification system based on ECLA and the IPC. The press releases are here and here. Both offices have yet to work out governance and operational details of the project, so changes to the USPC are not imminent...

Patent # 8,000,000 in 2011?

Posted on October 24, 2010
The USPTO is fast approaching another milestone... Patent number 8,000,000 might be less than a year away. The highest numbered utility patent (as of Oct. 19, 2010) is 7,818,816. At the current rate of about 60,000 patents per quarter, the USPTO could reach the 8 million mark as early as next August or September...

How Complete is the USTPO Patent Database?

Posted on October 18, 2010
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 anyone who is doing legal or business research...

New Database of IP Case Studies

Posted on October 14, 2010
The WIPO has launched a new database that contains profiles of intellectual property case studies from around the world. The collection of 100+ cases cover patents, trade marks and copyright and could be an excellent source of material for presentations and programs.

U.S. Patent Counts, Q3

Posted on October 14, 2010
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 precent increase over the same period in 2009...

Changes to Class 386 - Classification Order 1900

Posted on September 21, 2010
The USPTO has changed the title of Class 386, Television Signal Processing for Dynamic Recording or Reproducing. The new title is Motion Video Signal Processing for Recording or Reproducing. These and other changes are detailed in Classification Order 1900, issued on Sept...

Happy Birthday, Etch A Sketch!

Posted on July 28, 2010
Etch A Sketch, the iconic drawing toy of the 1960s and 1970s, is celebrating its 60th birthday this year. It was invented in the mid 1950s by Andre Cassagnes, an electrician in France. Lacking funds to patent his invention, Mr Cassagnes sought help from an investor named Paul Chaze...

Patent Models Index

Posted on July 09, 2010
The Smithsonian has published new guide and index to patent models owned by the National Museum of American History. The two volume work is available for free online and can also be purchased in hard copy from the Smithsonian Institution Press. Volume 1 provides listings by patent number and title of the invention...

U.S. Patent Counts, Q2 2010

Posted on July 08, 2010
There was a huge jump in the number of issued U.S. patents in Q2. The USPTO issued 64,037 patents from April through June, 15.4 percent more than in Q1 and 31.7 percent more than the same period in 2009. The number of published applications also increased 9...

What's Your Poison?

Posted on June 11, 2010
Actor Dan Ackroyd's latest venture into the wine/spirits market has run afoul of Ontario bureaucrats. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) has refused to sell Ackroyd's Crystal Head brand vodka at its retail stores because it comes in a skull-shaped bottle...

New ECLA Codes for Green Technologies

Posted on June 09, 2010
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...

Google Hosts Bulk USPTO Patent Data

Posted on June 03, 2010
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...

US Assignment Data in INPADOC

Posted on May 20, 2010
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...

Canadian Inventor/Designer Robert Dickie

Posted on April 30, 2010
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...

10th World IP Day and New Logo for WIPO

Posted on April 26, 2010
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...

Wikipedia Not an Authoritative Source, Judges Tell Govt. Officials

Posted on April 24, 2010
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...

Green Tech Program

Posted on April 24, 2010
Scientific American reports that the USPTO has approved only one third of the requests filed under its new "Green Tech" examination pilot program.

Chinese Patent Number System

Posted on April 20, 2010
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...

Reporting Data Errors in Patent Databases

Posted on April 16, 2010
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...

New University Patents Database

Posted on April 16, 2010
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...

Boliven Acquired by CambridgeIP

Posted on April 15, 2010
Members of the Boliven Network were notified today via e-mail that the service has been acquired by CambridgeIP, a UK-based intellectual property research and strategy consulting firm. Details about the deal will be forthcoming.

Ghost of Patents Past

Posted on April 09, 2010
Have you ever noticed old patent numbers printed on new products? I own a pie dough blender that I bought new about 15 years ago. Etched on its blade are three US patent numbers, 1486255, 1645052 and 1724356.A quick check in a patent database reveals that these were issued in 1924, 1927 and 1929, respectively...

Retrospective Kind Codes in Espacenet

Posted on April 01, 2010
The other day a colleague asked me why an "A" appeared at the end of older US patent numbers in espacenet records.I immediately answered that it's a document kind code: "A" is used for the first publication, "B" for the second and "C" for the third. However, something was odd about their presence in espacenet...

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