PATNEWS: More progress putting patent abstracts onto Internet
Gregory Aharonian
THREE MORE YEARS OF PATENT ABSTRACTS
SIX YEARS NOW AVAILABLE ON NET
(1983 - 1989, 4423556 - 4890334)
Recently I announced plans to raise $10,000 to put all of the US patent
abstracts onto the Internet, hoping to get 20 $500 contributions from law
firms and corporations. More donations have come, resulting in three more
years worth of abstracts being added (now 1984 to 1989 are available), plus
an updating of patent titles to February 1995, all at the Web site:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html
POSSIBILITY OF FREE PATENT ABSTRACT SEARCHING
Recently one of the European Internet nodes offered to not only host my
databases at their site (so that European Interneters don't have to tie up
trans-Atlantic phone lines), but they also are willing to allow the patent
abstracts to be searchable. This will require two things - another donation
campaign, and some Internet searching software that can handle two gigabyte
data sets. If anyone knows of such a tool (WAIS tends to break down over a
half a gigabyte), please let me know.
So once I finish the abstracts campaign, I will be starting a searching
campaign, so that hopefully sometime by the end of the year, all US patent
abstracts since 1975 (over 1.5 million) will be freely keyword searchable over
the Internet.
UPDATE OF PATENT ABSTRACTS
To date, I had put up three years of patent abstracts, 1987 to 1989.
Well, thanks to the rest of the Stanford contribution, plus two more sets of
donations, I have put up three more years of patent abstracts, 1984 to 1986.
Thus I am one third of the way to my $10,000 goal of putting up all patent
abstracts. Pass the word, pester your boss, hint your patent law firm, lobby
the AIPLA/IPO/SPA/BSA/SIC/NSF.
At the end of this text is my original announcement. What follows are
kudos to all of the contributors to date, kudos to be repeated each time a
new contribution comes in. On behalf of all that benefit from use of patent
data over the Internet, thanks for the donations.
KUDOS KUDOS KUDOS KUDOS KUDOS
NEW - CORPORATE
INTERNET DIRECT
The folks at Internet Direct have contributed $500 to the Internet
Patent Abstracts project. Internet Direct markets I-Site Internet Servers.
I-Site is the latest innovation in establishing a complete presence on
the World Wide WeB, the fastest growing component of the Internet. I-Site
is an affordable, turn-key and secure solution for companies that need any
one of the following comprehensive Internet services, even if they already
have a Web Site or Network Connection: dedicated Web Server, Dual T-1
Internet Access, Secure Internet Presence, Complete ftp Server, Complete
E-mail Server, and Internet Advertising Presence. Contact Bill Fisher
at Internet Direct (1-602-222-2888), in...@direct.net, or visit them in
Arizona. Thanks to Internet Direct for their support.
NEW - CORPORATE
JOEL SEELY / SYNAPTICS
Joel Seely, working at Synaptics, has contributed $500 to the Internet
Patent Abstracts project. As soon as Joel tells me what Synaptics does, I
will say all sorts of nice things about them. In any event, thanks to Joel
for his support.
NEW - INDIVIDUAL
Hideyo Inouye has donated $100. Hideyo specializes in translating
patents to and from Japanese if you ever have such need (contact me for
more information). Also thanks to Stanton McCandlish of the EFF, and
Richard Brown of Dartmouth for their donations.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
The Technology Transfer Office of Stanford University has contributed
$1000 to the Internet Patent Abstracts project. In an article in Science
magazine last year, Stanford University was listed amongst the top 5
academic institutions in terms of royalties derived from licensed patents,
no doubt due in part to the work of the TechTran office. As a measure
of Stanford's capability, in 1993 Stanford earned $31 million in royalties
from 214 patents. Another group at Stanford University is working on a
joint academic project to put up computing technical reports onto the
Internet, which will help the various software prior art projects going
on around the country.
I hope the other TTOs in the Bay Area feel guilty and contribute,
so I can then guilt Bay Area patent law firms (their clients) into
contributing. So for the donation, and other ways Stanford contributes
to the patenting world, thanks.
FAY, SHARPE, BEALL, FAGAN, MINNICH & MCKEE
Fay, Sharpe, Beall, Fagan, Minnich & McKee (FSBFMM) is donating $500
to the Internet Patent Abstracts project. FSBFMM has offices in Cleveland,
Ohio, and Alexandria, VA. They offer services in patents, trademarks,
copyrights, chip mask protection, trade secrets, licensing of technology,
and litigation. There are 27 IP professionals at the firm.
FSBFMM has a Web home page on the Internet at:
http://www.multiverse.com/faysh
which it would be nice if you all clicked over to. Thanks to FSBFMM for
their donation. If you are in the Midwest, consider using them.
KENYON & KENYON
Kenyon & Kenyon is donating $500 to the Internet Patent Abstracts
project. Kenyon & Kenyon offers one of the most diverse intellectual
property practices in New York, with 78 intellectual property lawyers.
The firm's clients are primarily large electronics, computer, or
chemical pharmaceutical companies. Kenyon & Kenyon has a signficant
number of clients around the world, and working relationships with law
firms in many other countries. The firm has a Washington office, and
a European office in Frankfurt, Germany.
A well known Boston company I do software development work for from
time to time, chose Kenyon & Kenyon to handle their software patenting,
which is a good recommendation in my book. Thanks to Kenyon & Kenyon
for their donation. If you are in New York, give them a call.
QUADTECH INTERNATIONAL
Quadtech International not only donated $500 to the Internet Patent
Abstracts project, but Jeff Sainio, manager of their R&D, also donated
an additional $100. Quad/Tech is a supplier of web printing-press
auxiliary products, and is one of the top ten printing companies in
the United States, for example, handling the printing for magazines.
If you are in the neighborhood of Sussex, Wisconsin, check them out
(414-246-7500). In any event, thanks to Quadtech.
INDIVIDUALS
James Nasiatka has donated $100 with more to come as his patent
drafting business continues to grow. You can find out more about his
patent and technical illustration services by clicking over to his Web
page at:
http://www.mcs.com/~jwylde/patents/J_and_J.html
to find about more about his Chicago based business.
A variety of individuals have contributed: Boris Pevzner, Qiang Li,
Stuart Soffer (of Taliesin Software Research in Menlo Park, a patent
analyst), Jeff Hawkins (of Palm Computing in Los Altos), Stephen Gray
(Gray Associates) and Greg Galloway (of Falco-Archer in Redmond). Thanks
to you all.
And of course, thanks to the University of North Carolina for hosting
the patent search site, especially Jonathan Magid, who has been great in
helping me figure ways to interface these gigabyte databases to Mosaic.
Similarly, thanks to MathSoft (Cambridge, MA) for allowing me to use their
Sun network as a development testbed for the patent text retreival
software used at UNC.
Greg Aharonian
Internet Patent News Service
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA, 02178
617-489-3727, pat...@world.std.com
(for info on free subscription, send 'help' to pat...@world.std.com )
(for prior art search services info, send 'prior' to pat...@world.std.com )
(for WWW patent searching, try http://sunsite.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html )
====================
THE ORIGINAL SOLICITATION - PASS THE WORD
A few months ago, I announced an effort to solicit $10,000 to put up all
of the patent abstracts since 1975 onto the Internet for simple retrieval.
A few donations and promises did come in, enough for me to charge most of the
equipment and some of the data I need to my credit cards, to get the project
off the ground.
Well, a four gigabyte disk drive is now mounted down at UNC where my Web
pages are, and I have made available one year's worth of patent abstract text
data (abstracts for patents from 4794652 to 4890334, those for the year 1989).
The abstracts are freely retreivable by patent number (sorry no searching yet,
that needs the big donations). To try out the abstract retreival service,
connect to my Web pages, at:
http://sunsite.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html
with the HTML script for the abstract retreival being on the home page. Just
enter the patent number and press the "Submit Query" button.
I would like to thank those who have contributed so far, and will be
preparing an issue of my Patent News Service kudo-ing these contributors.
The rest of the abstracts? I am still hoping that the many patent law firms
and corporations receiving my News Service and using the Web site will come
forth with additional $500 donations.
Each additional $500 donation will result in the addition of one more
year's worth of patent abstracts, with 20 years still left. So if you like
what you see, see what you and/or your corporation can do. Anyone you can
lobby, please do, if you like what I am doing.
Alternatively (joining the rampant commercialization of the Internet),
for the full $10,000 a contributor can get advertising space on the bottom
of each outgoing abstract. With thousands of people using the Web site each
week (for just titles, more for abstracts), this results in tons of publicity
and marketing exposure.
Any $500 donation over $10,000 will be used for making the exemplary
claims available, and a second $10,000 contribution gets its contributor
advertising space on the bottom of each outgoing claim.
Here is a sample of a retreivable abstract:
4,812,345
Inventor(s) Imai, Shozaburo; Isobe, Michihisa; Yokoo
State/Country JPX
Assignee Sumitomo Chemical Company, Limited
Title Optical disk substrate
There is disclosed herein an optical disk substrate
comprising a copolymer produced by polymerizing 50 to 65%
by weight of methyl methacrylate (a) units, 20 to 35% by
weight of tricyclo[5.2.1.0.sup.2.6 ]deca-8-yl methacrylate
(b) units, 5 to 25% by weight of cyclohexyl methacrylate
(c) units and 1 to 5% by weight of acrylic ester (d) units.
Issued: 1989 03 14 Filed: 1988 02 11
Sorry to have to nickel and dime everyone, but all I have encountered
from the various powers that be (that should be doing this) is polite yawns.
Keep your fingers crossed.