IP Australia has announced that the AusPat search system for Australian patents will be upgraded later this month.

"The following changes will be included in AusPat 1.1

1. Addition of Opposition Data
2. Addition of Acceptance Published Date as a search field
3. Removal of Acceptance Date as a search field
4. Addition of Name of Agent paying last continuation/renewal fee (for mainframe applications)
5. Addition of Extension of Term data (for applications managed in PAMS)
6. Addition of Court Order details for Court Ordered Amendments (for applications managed in NPS)
7. Changes to Application Details page to support new data elements."

Labels: Patent News, Resources

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has updated its PATENTSCOPE service to provide full-text data search of Japanese patent documents. Previously full-text searching was only available in English, French, German, Spanish and Russian.

WIPO's press release discusses the benefits of this new facility: '“This enhancement improves access to Japanese PCT international applications, which make up 16% of all applications filed in the past four years,” said Mr. Francis Gurry, Deputy Director General of WIPO. He recalled that, after English, Japanese is the language in which most applications are filed. He also noted that a number of top users of the PCT are Japanese companies. “This is part of our continuing endeavor to add value to the PCT system,” noted Mr. Gurry, who oversees the work of the PCT. The PCT is a cornerstone of the international patent system and offers a rapid, flexible and cost-effective means of obtaining patent protection in up to 139 countries.

'The searchable Japanese text data includes descriptions and claims of published PCT international applications filed electronically in Japanese and published on or after July 3rd, 2008. It further includes all the titles and the bulk of abstracts of international applications published since 2004. The Japanese text data will also be available on a weekly basis to all patent offices and companies that have subscribed to the FTP data delivery service.'

Resources and for further information

World Intellectual Property Organization press release - WIPO’s PATENTSCOPE® Service Expands Language Functionality

World Intellectual Property Organization - PATENTSCOPE

Labels: Patent News, Resources

Labels: Patent News, Resources

An Award of Appreciation was presented to Donna Cooper in recognition of Donna’s service to PIUG as Newsletter Editor from 2003 to 2004 and Annual Meeting Brochure Editor 2002 to 2008.

Mark Hutcherson was also presented an Award of Appreciation for his service as Newsletter Editor Extraordinaire 2004 to 2008.

In addition, Stephen Adams was presented the Special Recognition Award in recognition of Stephen’s Tireless Service to PIUG for his Ten Years of Excellent Patent Searching Workshops, being on the PIUG Board of Directors 2002 to 2006, and also for being voted Favorite Speaker countless times.

"The Patent Information Users Group, Inc. (PIUG) is a not-for-profit organization for individuals having a professional, scientific or technical interest in patent information. With the ever increasing volume of patents and related technical documents, the effective retrieval and analysis of patent information has become an essential skill in business. The mission of PIUG is therefore to encourage the development of patent information research and analysis systems, to further develop members' patent research and analysis skills, and to provide appropriate recognition for its members excelling in the field. Through this international forum and discussion, we promote and improve the retrieval, analysis and dissemination of patent information.

PIUG has over 700 members in 2008 including 440 patent information professionals who do patent searching for a corporation, 60 patent information professionals who do patent searching for law firms and 125 patent information consultants."

For further information about PIUG, including how to become a member, is available on the PIUG website.

Labels: Patent News, Resources

AusPat is now IP Australia's official source of online data, which means that the previous systems Patsearch and PATADMIN will no longer need to be used.

"In this release you can:

• Search for applications managed in PATADMIN and PAMS systems through the Quick, Structured or Advanced search interfaces
• Use any of the 20 search fields
• Use the Name Selector to find variants of Applicant and Inventor names
• View, sort and print the results of your search in the “Search Results” page
• Customise the “Search Results” page by adding, removing or rearranging columns"

"In future releases you will have access to:

• Additional opposition, ownership and publication data
• Full text searching of applications back to 1904
• eJournal – Search, browse and print information from AU Journals
• eRegister – Search, browse and print information from the Australian Patent Register
• eCase – public access to patent case files that are deemed Open for Public Inspection"

AusPat is available at: http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/auspat/

References and for further information

IP Australia news - AusPat - Australia's new patent search system

IP Australia - AusPat User's Guide

Labels: Patent News, Resources

"This change will affect every user who wishes to access our published patent information on-line. The new database will be faster, provide a wide range of easily accessible information and allow users to search or download information in a variety of formats'", said Sean Dennehey, Assistant Comptroller and Patents Director of the UK Intellectual Property Office.

"The new service has been developed following an internal review and external consultation exercise. It offers users the ability to search, view or download individual or multiple sections of patents data across a range of publication weeks. It also offers the user automatic links to the patents register and published documents."

The new database is available at http://www.ipo.gov.uk/patent/p-journal/p-pj

Sources and for further information

UK-IPO news - The UK Intellectual Property Office launches new free online Patents Journal service

UK-IPO - Searchable Patents Journal

Labels: Patent News, Resources

PriorSmart.com is a new free IP Resource that providing access to 60+ online patent databases from a single search box. Using PriorSmart.com is easy; simply type in the query and then select which database to use.

The available databases include: US-granted patents (USPTO), US-applications (USPTO), Espacenet - European Union, Google - US-all, PatentLens - Worldwide, and Delphion - Worldwide.

The site also provides access to patent databases for following countries: Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Delphion, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Estonia, European Union, Finland, France, Free Patents Online, Germany, Google, Great Britain, Greece, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Latin America, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Panama, PatentLens, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United States, United States (apps), Uruguay, Venezuela, World IP Office, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Christmas Island, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Republic of, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russian Federation, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Province of China, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United States, Uzbekistan.

Visit the PriorSmart.com website at http://www.priorsmart.com/

Labels: Patent News, Resources

In addition to the full-text data from 22 patent authorities, IP DataDirect-Patents also includes:

• "Bibliographic and abstract data from 96 authorities
• English-language machine translations
• Clipped images
• Legal status, forward and backward citations, and patent-family data
• PDF images in searchable, bookmarked, and compressed format"

LexisNexis' TotalPatent database has also been updated to output data in XML format for use in internal systems. Furthermore, there TotalPatent now has an option to search by inventor/assignee, and is now organised into patent families.

The new functionality added to the PatentOptimizer tool includes, "patent links that navigate directly into the TotalPatent service, allowing customers to check terms and references, as well as verify citations. Additionally, customers verifying claims can immediately compare and navigate multiple claim sets across a series of user-identified documents."

Sources & for further information

LexisNexis Press Releases - LexisNexis® Expands Intellectual Property Solutions to Help Customers Protect Valuable Assets

LexisNexis - IP DataDirect-Patents

LexisNexis - TotalPatent

LexisNexis - PatentOptimizer

Labels: Patent News, Resources

"PatBase offers over 20 million full-text searchable documents from the US, EP, PCT, GB, DE and FR patent-issuing authorities. A hit map and keyword-in-context hit analysis assist users in document examination. PatBase also offers citation searching enabling users to navigate through patent and no-patent documents cited against US, EP, and WO publications as well as a citation tree visual analysis tool. An alerting service, which provides clients with up-to-date reports on their search criteria, is available on a weekly or monthly basis."

Minesoft also offers other software products related to PatBase:

"PatBase Express offers a simple and intuitive way of investigating patents by subject, competitor or number. Based on the original PatBase database, which was developed by Minesoft and RWS Group as a search tool for patent professionals, PatBase Express draws upon the same comprehensive data, but offers a simplified way of searching so it can be used by anyone in a corporation who would like to find out about patents or competitor activities. Used by research engineers & chemists, paralegals and business managers."

"Minesoft Patent Family Portal is an ideal service for fast, up-to-date checks on patent families and corresponding legal status. Designed for users who require the very latest comprehensive patent family and legal status data in a well-organised, concisely tabulated layout, it provides fast, concise access to INPADOC and Patent Office Registry records covering over 70 countries."

The PatBase website is located at: http://www.patbase.com

Labels: Patent News, Resources

In addition, there are now machine translated titles and abstracts for Germany, France, Japan, Korean and China. Other new features listed on the Questel news page include the following:

• "Natural and Multi-lingual search via our partnership with Lingway for PatentXL
• Comprehensive JP legal status via our partnership with PATOLIS Corp.
• More stats in the analysis module via our partnership with Intellixir"

Questel has also added new cited patents and non-patent documents in PatPlus and FamPat for the following countries: BE, CH, NL, TR, AU, JP, BS, ES, SG, DK, LU, FI, CY, and IT. This is in addition their existing literature for EP, WO, US, DE, FR, GB and JP. Moreover, "the Citation search field now includes standardized citation numbers and displays hit-term highlighting."

The final new enhancement is the Questel Analysis module. Questel states that "with this new powerful and interactive web-based analysis module, you can analyse patents from within your PatentExaminer workfiles by:

• Date, country, priority country
• Inventors and Assignees
• IPC - by IPC including IPC definitions
• Cross analysis by Assignees and IPCs"

Questel is available for a fee from www.questrel.com

Source and for further information

Questel - Website home page [includes release update details]

Labels: Patent News, Resources

IP Newsflash has been relaunched with a great new look and new functionality, making it an ever more useful tool for IP Menu readers.

The website, run by Dr Rolf Claessen, automatically consolidates intellectual property news, decisions and notices from patent offices and IP resources. The key feature of IP Newsflash is that all this information is displayed on the homepage, along with a patent family search, and now also a free class monitor for EP publications.

With the IP Newsflash homepage now being fully customisable it is now even easier to find relevant information. Each section on the homepage can either be displayed or hidden. Furthermore, the "IP News", "Caselaw" and "Notices" sections can be set to display only updates from certain patent offices or IP resources. Links to RSS news feeds for each of these sections are also available.

The IP Newsflash website is available at http://www.ipnewsflash.com/

Labels: Resources

• "One-click ordering
• Fast access to searches carried out by Avantiq
• Memo and Bookmark function
• Improved searching capabilities
• Results sorted by relevance
• Reporting and management features
• Teamwork section"

The new version of Inspiro was launched on 11 February 2008 and is now available from here.

Sources and for more information

Avantiq news - Upgrade To Inspiro® Version 2.0 On February 11, 2008

Avantiq website - Inspiro 2 Brochure

Avantiq - Inspiro 2 Access

Labels: Resources

"By electing to proceed under the PPH initiative, patent applicants in both Canada and the U.S. will benefit from expedited examination to obtain corresponding patents faster and more efficiently. This initiative should also benefit both offices by facilitating the exploitation of the work performed by the other office, thereby improving patent quality and reducing the examination workload."

The US-Canadian Patent Prosecution Highway pilot program follows other such programs between the UK & US, the UK & Japan, the US & Japan, and Japan & Korea.

Sources & further information

Canadian Intellectual Property Office news - Canada-US Patent Prosecution Highway

Information about other Patent Prosecution Highways

IP Menu news - UK & USA - Patent Prosecution Highway opens between UK and USA

IP Menu news - UK, Japan & US - Patent Prosecution Highway updates

Labels: Canada, Resources, United States

Sources & for further information

Canadian Intellectual Property Office news - Complete Collection of Canadian Industrial Design Registrations is Now Available!

Canadian Intellectual Property Office - Canadian Industrial Designs Database

Labels: Canada, Resources

have recently been updated.

The new version of ATMOSS has the following additions:

1. "Allow search by ‘notification date’ as shown below (this can be found under the Advanced Search Option):
2. TM number ‘from’ Range now functions correctly.
3. If a TM record is a Certification mark, there will be a hyperlink to the “Certification Mark Rules” on the Trade Mark Details page."

The changes to the E-Form TM application system include:

1. "For TM Headstart Applications, Email address is now mandatory for both the address for correspondence and applicant details screen
2. The system has been updated so that there is a limit of how many categories you can select using the picklist. The maximum number of categories you can select is 2,000 per application.
3. Customers now have the option of emailing themselves an official receipt for TM Applications, TM Headstart Requests and TM Headstart payments.
4. Customers can now enter up to 200 characters for an organisation name. If organisation is also the Address for Correspondence then they will be asked to provide an abbreviated name with a limit of 35 characters."

Source & for further information

IP Australia news - Updates to Trade Marks online forms and ATMOSS

Labels: Australia, Resources