Domestic and International Patents, Trademarks, and IP Strategy
You can now search patents with Google. Google Patent Search covers the entire collection of patents made available by the USPTO, from patents issued in the 1790s through those issued in the middle of 2006.
Links: Google Patent Search (via lifehacker)
Senior officials of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, as well as a representative from the Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program, will be available live on-line on Thursday, November 16 , from 2 to 3 pm (ET). They will be answering questions and offering tips for independent inventors. Instructions for taking part in the chat will be posted on the home page of the USPTO website at 10:30 am (ET) on Thursday. Inventors can begin logging on at 1:30 pm.
Links: transcripts and index from previous on-line chats.
Some sites to search non-patent prior art:
CiteSeer
IBM Research
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Scirus
Search for final decisions rendered by the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI) here. The USPTO Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) page can be found here.
Links: BPAI Search, USPTO FOIA page.
Web 2.0 + Patents = Patents 2.0? The Peer to Patent Project aims to design and pilot an online system for peer review of patents. Established in conjunction with the USPTO, and sponsored by IBM, this program will encourage communities to review pending patent applications and to provide feedback to the patent office on existing prior art that may not have been discovered by the applicant or examiner.
“By using social software, such as social reputation, collaborative filtering and information visualization tools, we can apply the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ – or, more accurately the wisdom of the experts – to complex social and scientific problems. This could make it easier to protect the inventor’s investment while safeguarding the marketplace of ideas.”
Links: The Peer to Patent Project, Project Wiki, Project Blog.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) is posting oral arguments in mp3 format. All future argued cases will be available twenty-four hours after argument is completed.
The CAFC has nationwide jurisdiction in a variety of subject areas, including international trade, government contracts, patents, trademarks, certain money claims against the United States government, federal personnel, and veterans’ benefits.
If you would like to browse all cases, simply enter the letter “v” in the Caption field of the search page and click on “Search”.
Links: Oral Arguments MP3s, CAFC.
The USPTO‘s pdf based Electronic Filing System (EFS-Web) will go live on March 17. EFS-Web promises to greatly simplify and streamline the filing of patent applications, enabling applicants to file documents as pdf files twenty-four hours a day.
Links: EFS-Web help.
Senior officials of the United States Patent and Trademark Office will be available live on-line on Wednesday, February 22, from 2 to 3 pm (ET). They will be answering questions and offering tips for independent inventors. Instructions for taking part in the on-line chat will be posted on the home page of the USPTO website at 10:30 am (ET) on Wednesday. Inventors can begin logging on at 1:30 pm.
Links: transcripts and index from previous on-line chats.
The Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) Eighth Edition, Revision 4 has been released. The Manual is published to provide U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent examiners, applicants, attorneys, agents, and representatives of applicants with a reference work on the practices and procedures relative to the prosecution of patent applications before the USPTO.
This revision incorporates the changes necessitated by the final rule “Changes To Implement the Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement Act of 2004,” which became effective on September 14, 2005. Chapter 2300 has been rewritten to incorporate the new Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences rules that became effective on September 13, 2004. The rules directed to interferences are in Part 41, Subparts D and E of title 37, Code of Federal Regulations.
Websites such as shouldexist.org enable users to publish their inventive ideas and collaborate with others to refine and develop their inventions. Users may donate their time and money to the website and to specific projects. Of particular interest is that all discussions and projects are documented, dated, published on-line, and publicly available; this, and any other on-line publication, is considered prior art (MPEP 901.06, 2128 ). While it is unlikely that any patent office, patent attorney, or professional prior art searcher is currently searching this and similar websites, such sites should be searched prior to and during the drafting of any patent application. The public disclosures on sites such as shouldexist.org may also prove valuable in questioning the validity of patents during reexaminations and patent infringement proceedings.
Links: shouldexist.org, halfbakery.com, idea-a-day.com, brightidea.com, creativitypool.com, Idea Banks on dmoz.org, thinkcycle.org, globalideasbank.org.
