Archive - Latest Intellectual Property Resources News

• PatMate Update
  Gim Jean of PatMate has updated his website.  The cost for PatMate is a one-off charge (USD$100), there is no ongoing licensing.  He now also indicates that if you purchase before 10 July 2001 you will receive free upgrades.  As I said in an earlier post, it is great to see some competition is this area!  You can visit the PatMate site here, or download the program here.
  Posted Rodney Cruise

• CIPO Annual Index 2000
  The Canadian Intellectual Property Office has published the Annual Index of the Patent Office Record.  It is no longer published in paper form.  A PDF version is available from here.
  Posted by Simon Ware

• CIPO Website Redesign
  The Canadian Intellectual Property Office has redesigned their website.  IP MENU thinks it looks quite good!  They have added new pages including E-Services, Fees, Forms, Publications, Navigation Guide and Employment Opportunities. To check out their new design and funtionality, click here.
  Posted by Simon Ware

• New Top-Level Domain Name Endorsed - .EU
  EuropeMedia.net has reported that the "European Parliament’s industry committee has adopted a report on the ‘.eu’ domain name, noting it is an essential element in building the e-economy and e-commerce in Europe". To read more, click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

Thursday, June 28 2001

• Searching US Patents on Delphion using the Vivisimo Search Engine
  I have discovered a new way of searching and grouping US Patents using the Vivisimo search engine.  The Vivisimo search engine searches the Delphion US file and groups results under "topic" headings.  I would not recommend this as an alternate method of searching patent literature, although you may find it of some use.  To use it, go to the Vivisimo search engine (click here), and select advanced search options followed by selecting the "patents" subset.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

Wednesday, June 27 2001

• British Library New Strategic Directions - Survey
  "The British Library has recently released its 'New Strategic Directions' consultation exercise to obtain views on its proposed strategy. One of the areas specifically reviewed is future patent library provision".    The aim of the survey is to gather responses from anyone with an interest in the future of patent information in the United Kingdom.  If you are reading IP MENU then that probably includes you!. To respond to the survey, click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Delphion™ Training - Web Seminar
  Delphion invites you to joing them and "learn how you can explore Delphion, right from your desktop through a 90-minute web seminar that will show you how to search more productively for the IP information you need. Plus, you will find out about many of the new features on Delphion, including Code Browsing, Saved Searches and Alerts. We'll walk you through examples of Delphion's unique research and analysis capabilities including Text Clustering, Patent Lab II and the Integrated View.  Date and Time: 06/28/2001 12:00 (Eastern, USA & Canada (DST) = GMT 0400".   For more information click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise.

Tuesday, June 26 2001

• Apple Mac Users - Download with Patent Grabber™ 1.1
  I have just discovered this software aimed at Apple Mac Users - Patent Grabber™ 1.1.  "Patent Grabber makes it easy to download U.S. patents for free from public patent archives. Instead of going to the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office web site and loading and printing patent pages one at a time from your web browser, you simply give Patent Grabber a list of patents and click "Get Patents." Patent Grabber then downloads every page of all the patents to your Mac while you do something else. And once the patents are downloaded, they are yours to keep and print from Patent Grabber's special Library folder at any time". Click here for more information.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Russian Patent & Trade Mark Office - Annual Report 2000
  The year 2000 annual report form the Russian Patent & Trade Mark Office (RUPTO) is now available online in English.  Click here for more information.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Derwent Questionnaire - Links to patent documents
  Derwent has a questionnaire running relating to ways in which they can integrate the delivery of patent documents from within their added-value products and services. Derwent would like customer feedback and you can help by completing their our questionnaire.  Click here for further information.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• USPTO Marks 100,000th Online Trade Mark Application
  "The Department of Commerce's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will celebrate the 100,000th web-based trademark filing at a ceremony on June 25, 2001, 11 a.m. at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Museum. The Trademark Electronic Application System (TEAS) recorded the 100,000th application on June 4, 2001. The milestone application was filed by the General Electric Company for the mark "GE," which will be used on the company's plastic products." Click here for more information.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Summary of Results of the Trilateral Technical Meeting 2001
  The Trilateral Office has released summary results of the May 2001 meeting.   The report covers Business method-related inventions; Gene-based invention; Expansion of the TriNet; Information Dissemination and Harmonization of Electronic Filing.   Click here for more information.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

Friday, June 22 2001

• PatMate - Download and Combine Patent PDF Files
  Gim Jean is a patent searcher with a flair for software design. He has recently released version 1.3 of his PatMate™ software.  The software is similar in principal to Lattice™/PatSee™ in that it is a patent image downloader that enable you to download full pages, specific page, drawings, description and claims selectively from EPO, USPTO, JPO, Delphion and KIPRIS. PatMate can download individual PDF pages and combine them into a single PDF file.  An evaluation version is available and will allow you to download 7 pages.  In our tests, PatMate™ was lightening fast.  The cost is USD$100.00.  Visit Gim Jean's website here and download his evaluation software here.  If that site is too slow or unavailable, IP MENU have placed a copy on their servers (with Gim's permission).  Click here for the alternate download site. Gim states on his website that "you will be very happy with PatMate".  
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• STN™ - New Trade Mark Database
  STN has annoucned a new trademark file, IRMAS, International Register tradeMArks Search System. "IRMAS covers valid International Register marks registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Geneva, Switzerland. IRMAS contains application, registration, publication, and priority data, ownership, the Nice classification of goods and services, the Vienna classification for images, and images. History notes are available and are being updated, providing a concise overview of the legal status of the trademark. All textual information is searchable and displayable in English, French, and German. IRMAS contains over 360,000 records and is updated weekly".  For more information click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Employment Opportunity at Phillips Ormonde & Fitzpatrick
  Intellectual Property Opportunities - Trainee patent Attorneys.   Phillips Ormonde & Fitzpatrick is one of Australia's largest and most progressive firms of Patent & Trade Mark Attorneys. Phillips Ormonde are the firm behind IP MENU.  They have positions available in their Melbourne and Sydney Offices for Electrical or Mechanical Engineers.  For more information click here. To view other employment opportunities please click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• MicroPatent™ News - The Latest on MicroPatent's Expanding Service
  "MicroPatent’s full text database, PatSearch FullText, now provides US patent coverage back to 1836. Patents 1 – 3,930,270, spanning from 1836 – 1975, were recently added to the system. With this new data, PatSearch FullText now offers: US data to 1836, EP to 1988, WO to 1983 and Japanese data to 1976. MicroPatent is pleased to offer a special US-only full text search subscription, covering all files back to 1836, for the special introductory rate of USD$495/year..... Note: this data is included in existing PatSearch FullText subscriptions. MicroPatent added a new hot-linking feature to PatSearch FullText, called PatLink, which allows users to connect directly to patents listed or referenced in the source patent through the Patents Cited, PCT Publication Number and Related Applications fields. A red arrow in front of the record identifies patents to which a user may link. MicroPatent recently acquired Woolcott & Company, a global patent search firm with over 40 continuous years of service to the worldwide patent community. As a result of this acquisition, MicroPatent now offers advanced patent search services through Woolcott". For more information click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Questel-Orbit™ - European Patents Full-Text now available
  European full-text are now available on Questel-Orbit. The filesare separated into two databases, Published Applications (EPAPAT) and Granted Patents (EPBPAT). The EPAPAT file covers complete bibliographic information from 1978 and contains full-text information from 1987. An additional 88,000 full-text information for patent applications between 1978 and 1986 has also been added. This additional information, that has been OCRed by the EPO, has not previously been commercially available. The EPBPAT file offers comprehensive full-text coverage from 1991 and contains the claims and descriptions for granted European patents. For more information click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• IP MENU Update - German Federal Court Decisions
  "BGH-free" provides German Federal Court Decsions since early 1999. For more information click here. The Bundesverfassungsgerichts site provides German Federal Court Decsions since early 1998. For more information click here.
  Posted by Saskia Jahn

• US Patent Maintainence Fees Now Available Online
  US Maintenance fees are now available through the PAIR database. Click here for more information.
  Posted by Simon Ware

Tuesday, June 19 2001

• Chief Executive of the U.K. Patent Office talks to IP-Wire
  IP-Wire talked this month with the Comptroller General & Chief Executive of the United Kingdom Patent Office, Alison Brimelow. To read the interview, click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• IPR- Helpdesk™ - IP-News Daily!
  New from the IPR-Helpdesk is their service offering intellectual property related news updates via e-mail - and it is free of charge! They have created new subscription capabilities to allow readers to have items from the daily IP-News page sent directly to their inbox. Readers can select the news sections they wish to receive (Court news, Patents, Trademarks etc.), and can choose to receive them on a daily or weekly basis. To find out more click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

Monday, June 18 2001

• Hungarian Office Publishes Database on DVD
  On April 26, 2001 (World Intellectual Property Day), the Hungarian Patent Office issued its new DVD-ROM title called PIPACS, which is the Hungarian acronym for Public Access Industrial Property Database System. The database makes allows patent, utility model, industrial design and trademark matters and the relevant official actions be searched on a single user interface. For further information click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• MicroPatent™ Expands Searchable Collection of US Patents
  "MicroPatent is pleased to announce the addition of 1836 US patent data, now available through PatSearch FullText. These files were created using the Optical Scanning Recognition (OCR) process, with the original documents as the source. These additional files offer users expanded searching capability and fully searchable patent specifications of all US patents from numbers 1 through 3,551,908, bringing the coverage of US files from 1836 to date." For more information click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise.

• International Trade Mark Fee Calculator
  IP Australia's online services area has extended its fee calculator service to include costs for international registration of trade marks under the Madrid Protocol. To view the international trade mark fee calculator, click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• PatSee 2.1™ (Formerly Lattice) Final Version Released
  PatSee 2.1 is the next generation of PatSee(Formerly Lattice). "It expands on the existing functionality of earlier versions by introducing a much wider range of countries, a TIFF file viewer and concatenator and many more features".   For more information click here
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

Wednesday, June 13 2001

• USPTO SEEKS PUBLIC COMMENT ON PRIOR ART SOURCES FOR BUSINESS METHOD PATENTS
  The Department of Commerce's United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is soliciting public comment in a Federal Register notice on the databases it uses to find prior art relevant to its examination of software-implemented business method patents. The agency is also seeking public input on additional information and material that could be considered during examination of business method patents. Click here for more information.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand
  The latest edition of the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ) Bulletin is now available.  Click here for more information.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise.

Friday, June 8 2001

• Intellectual Property Office of Czech Republic
  Draft Law on Appellation of Origin and Geographic Denomination and Amendment of Law No. 634/1992 of Coll., on Consumer Protection as amended (only in Czech). Text is available in format: RTF, PDF
  
  Draft Law on Patent Maintenance Fees and Supplementary Protection Certificates for Medical Products and Plant Protection Products, and Amendment of Law No. 368/1992 of Coll., on Administrative Fees as amended, and Law No. 527/1990 of Coll., on Inventions and Rationalisation Proposals as amended (only in Czech). Text is available in format: RTF, PDF

Thursday, June 7 2001

• Canada - Draft Changes to the Trade-marks Regulations (1996)
  The Canadian Trade-marks Office has invited interested parties to submit comments by July 27, 2001 concerning changes to the Trade-marks Regulations (1996).   The changes are intended to streamline opposition proceedings. Click here for more information.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Intellectual Property Office of Czech Republic
  Database of the Administrative Decisions Delivered by the Industrial Property Office now available (appears to be in Czech only). Click here for more information.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Delphion™ Launches Intellectual Property Research Services for Business Professionals - Press Release
  CHICAGO — June 4, 2001 — "Delphion Inc., a leading provider of intellectual asset management software and services, today launched two new service packages for Delphion Research, located at www.delphion.com. The service packages, called Delphion Premier and Delphion Unlimited, provide business professionals with......"To read the full press release, click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• United States of America - USPTO June Edition of Pulse
  In this edition "OPM Approves Patent Professionals Pay Increase, President Nominates James E. Rogan, USPTO Museum Opens Exhibit on Ice Cream Inventions, Eleventh Annual Equal Employment Opportunity Service Awards Program, Puerto Rico Gets Another PTDL....".  Click here for the full June Edition of Pulse from the USPTO.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise.

Friday, June 1 2001

• SurfIP - New Features
  Our friends at SurfIP have added even more features to their great IP searching site.  This time a feature called "Patent Parade". "Patent Parade , which highlights innovative developments from around the world with a sample list of companies and their sample patent listings, is aimed at raising the level of IP awareness and their commercial potential. Patent Parade on SurfIP reaches out to a targeted and focused group of IP / legal, technology and business users". For more information email them at SurfIP_Info@BIGontheNet.com or click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• MircoPatent - 21 May 2001
  "Citation Indicators for US and EP patents are now available on MicroPatent's PatentWeb via CHI Research, a research consultancy internationally recognized for its in-depth technology analysis for technology, public and financial clients. These detailed reports allow PatSearch FullText users to perform forward and backward citation searches, expand search strategies, analyze business plans and chart new business development courses". For more information click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

Wednesday, May 30 2001

• United Kingdom - New CIPA President
  Tim Roberts is the new President of the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents. "Tim Roberts became a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Patent Agents in October 1964. For much of his career in the profession Tim was Patents Manager for ICI Plant Protection Division. He was Intellectual Property Manager for Zeneca Seeds from 1987 to 1995 since when he has been in private practice. He has been a member of CIPA's Council since 1994".  For more information click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise.

Tuesday, May 29 2001

• Bush names former impeachment manager to head Patent Office
  "President Bush has offered a top Commerce Department post to former House impeachment manager Rep. James Rogan, a Los Angeles- area Republican who lost an expensive re-election contest in November, the Associated Press reported". For more information click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Canada Signs Patent Law Treaty
  Canada has signed a new Patent Law Treaty on May 22, 2001. The implementation of this Treaty will benefit Canadian and foreign investors through a streamline process for filing and processing patent applications.For more information click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

Monday, May 28 2001

• Australian Patents Amendment Bill 2001
  The Patents Amendment Bill 2001 was introduced into the House of Representatives on 24 May 2001. The Bill amends the Patents Act 1990 to implement improvements to Australia's intellectual property system set out in the Government's Innovation Action Plan for the Future.  For more information click here or to view the Patent Amendment Bill 2001 click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

• Australian Innovation Patent Available
  The new Australian Innovation Patent is now available from IP Australia. The innovation patent is designed to be a relatively inexpensive patent right, which is quick and easy to obtain. For more information about innovation patents, click here.
  Posted by Rodney Cruise

Thursday, May 24, 2001

• Canada & Patent Law Treaty
  Canada has signed a new Patent Law Treaty. "The implementation of this Treaty will benefit Canadian and foreign investors through a streamlined process for filing and processing patent applications. The Government of Canada is hereby making a clear commitment to follow through on one aspect of the Speech from the Throne by promoting innovation and attracting investors by modernizing its patent law," added Minister Tobin. "Signing the Treaty will signal Canada's desire to remain a key player in international discussions on any future harmonization of procedures to administer patents."
  For more information click here.
  posted by Rodney Cruise 24 May 2001

• Delphion to Add New & Enhanced Features on 1 June
  In addition to its current bibliographic text and patent documents, Delphion is adding full text searching of European Applications, European Issued patents and Patent Cooperation Treaty data from 1 June 2001.  At the time of writing there is only 9 days left before Delphion becomes a subscription service.  For more information from Delphion click here.
  posted by Rodney Cruise 24 may 2001.

Thursday, May 17, 2001

• Domain Name Registration Scam
  "what's in a name? Plenty, if you want to register a website. New scams are targeting would-be website owners by offering the opportunity to pre-register names in new top level domains, and offering access to unofficial top level domain names. Domain names, such as "ftc.gov," are the unique terms that enable Internet users to locate a specific website. The top level domain is the final extension, such as ".com" or ".org."  For more information visit the US FTC site, click here.

• Australia - IP Australia News
  Exposure Draft of Design Bill 2001 Released - 4 May 2001
  "The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry, Science and Resources, the Hon Warren Entsch MP, has released an Exposure Draft of the Designs Bill to implement a new registration system for industrial designs for Australia. IP Australia welcomes comments in relation to the drafting and clarity of the Bill - we are particularly interested in receiving comments that focus on whether the key provisions (such as the definitions, threshold and infringement tests) are likely to work satisfactorily in practice. IP Australia wishes to ensure that the new legislation is accessible and relevant to users and stakeholders, and that the new registration system is quick, simple and efficient in its operation, as well as cost effective. To enable the Bill to be settled in time to meet Parliamentary timetables for introduction, IP Australia would like to receive any written comments on the Bill by close of business on Friday 1 June 2001". Exposure Draft of New Designs Bill - Press Release
  posted by rod cruise 4:52 PM