RE: [PIUG List] Should PTO add patent status to patent database?

Mike, excellent contribution on the history of patent dissemination in the =
US. Do you have any ready access to statistics about the volume of invent=
ions disclosed in the Official Gazettes in their early years? That would =
be a good follow-on posting. As a historian turned patent searcher, I =
found the posting below well worthwhile!

Roy Zimmermann
Medtronic

________________________________
From: Michael White [mailto:mwihkiete_at_yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 9:06 AM
To: PIUG Discussion List @ Listbox
Subject: Re: [PIUG List] Should PTO add patent status to patent database?

The exchange of information for patent rights is at the heart of the modern=
 patent system. In fact, if information about patents is difficult and expe=
nsive to obtain, the public, inventors and businesses will lose confidence =
in the system. This has been one of the themes touched on in recent books s=
uch as Patent Failure and Innovation and Its Discontents that criticize cur=
rent US patent laws. I would argue then that patent offices have a moral ob=
ligation and legal responsibility to disseminate patent information to the =
public in the most effective, efficient and economical manner possible. The=
 playing field should be level so that everyone has the same access to pate=
nt information. This is reflected in the current mission statement of the U=
SPTO, which includes the goal of "delivering IP information and education w=
orldwide", as well as various statutes and regulations.

This is nothing new. Thomas Jefferson suggested in the early 1790s that inv=
entors should publish at their own expense notices of their patent rights i=
n federal court gazettes. He also proposed that patent documents and other =
technical publications be made available to the public in a national patent=
 library. Nineteenth century patent commissioners, such as Gen. Leggett (18=
71-1874), took a lot of flak for their efforts to disseminate patent inform=
ation. Leggett oversaw the first large-scale printing of patent specificati=
ons (made possible by the development of photolithography) and the introduc=
tion of the Official Gazette in the early 1870s. He was accused of wasting =
inventors' money, naiviety and even fraud. It's interesting to note that so=
me private publishers applauded these initiatives. The Scientific American,=
 which published patent abstracts and served as a kind of unofficial gazett=
e from the 1840s-1860s, enthusiastically supported the OG. In one editorial=
 it even suggested that the OG would reduce examiners' workloads, as every =
applicant would be expected to consult the OG and only apply for patents on=
 truly novel inventions.

The development of increasingly powerful and inexpensive ICT has been the g=
reatest boon to the dissemination of patent information since the invention=
 of photolithographic printing 150 years ago. Should patent offices take fu=
ll advantage of ICT, open source software and the web to disseminate patent=
 information. Absolutely. And these systems should meet current standards i=
n functionality and design, e.g. PDF as the default standard for sharing el=
ectronic documents, faceted searching, etc.

Should the USPTO include patent status information, fee payments, etc. in i=
ts web-based patent databases? Of course. I suspect that the reason it hasn=
't taken steps to do so already has a lot of it has to do with old-fashione=
d bureacratic inertia, a hardened silo-and-stovepipe organizational structu=
re and other, more urgent, priorities. The infrastructure for handling the =
various types of information generated by the patent system has grown up ov=
er decades. Like many government agencies, I think the USPTO has had a diff=
icult time modernizing its legacy systems and historical workflows.

Mike White

----- Original Message ----
From: Gregory Aharonian <srctran_at_TheWorld.com>
To: "PIUG Discussion List @ Listbox" <piug_discussion_list_at_v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 1:39:42 PM
Subject: [PIUG List] Should PTO add patent status to patent database?


I have two suggestions which I have to beleive are trivial to
implement:

    1) The patent full text database available from the PTO
    should indicate whether the patent is still active, i.e.,
    the assignee has paid the latest maintenance fee.

    2) For any U.S. patent application that has issued as a
    patent, the returned text data for the patent application
    should have a hyperlink for the corresponding issued patent.

I am sure others have the pet peeves, and maybe PIUG should make
a list and formally present it to the Patent Office. The PTO
search engines have always been retarded, decades behind real
search technology. But some of these fixes don't even require
new search engines, just a bit of ingenuity.

Greg Aharonian


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Received on Tue Aug 26 2008 - 17:40:14