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A new Mosaic site for patent searching (fwd)
From: David Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 1994 19:02:10 -0400
From: srctran () world std com (Gregory Aharonian) To: patents () world std com I have created a Mosaic site with 500 MB of PTO & patenting information, including the beginning of an Internet site that provides full searching capabilities of the PTO's patent text databases for free. Beyond lots of documents, the current Mosaic site allows people to retreive patent titles in any class/subclass by clicking through a few screens. The patent title data goes from 3500000 to Dec 1993. The Mosaic site is at: http://sunsite.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html (the Sun servers are going through special upgrades from Sun, so crash from time to time, so if your http request fails, try a little later in the day) with the following top level menu items: Determine patent class/subclass using Manual of Classification Master list of all 400+ patent classes Design patent groups ELECTRONIC patent groups MECHANICAL patent groups ENGINEERING patent groups CHEMICAL patent groups Determine patent class/subclass using Index to Classification RETRIEVE patent titles using class/subclass code Patent documents from the PTO, PCT, EPO, etc. Phone numbers for various PTO offices PTO Examining Groups - key personel and contact points Special PTO P.O. boxes for sending materials to the PTO Crystal City Public Patent Searching Room PTO depository libraries across the country US Patent filing fees Massachusetts roster of attorneys Preparation of Patent Drawings - PTO guide 37 CFR 1.84 appendices to Patent Drawings guide Drawing examples appendix 4 of Patent Drawing guide Current PCT countries and future expansion Paris Convention for int. property protection US Code Section 35 - federal patent laws IPNS - Internet Patent News Service Archive of stories from the IPNS, etc. ==================== A FEW NOTES Some of patent titles being retreived are truncated in length at 157 characters. This is a quirk of the C code I hacked together to provide quick retreivals of hundreds of patent titles for each request. This will be fixed at some point in the future. Also, many of the pages of information you will be requesting range in size from 20K to 60K, so make sure you save what you retreive so you don't have to rerequest the information. Many of the text files are in plain ASCII format. If any of you want to volunteer to convert them to HTML format, please let me know. Finally, if you encounter any errors in the patent data being sent out, please let me know. HOW GOOD IS IT? The above said, here is my first review: "I saw you at the MIT Entrepreneur-Club meeting today, and so the first thing I did upon getting back to my office was doing a simple patent search. So I would like to thank you: Your system is great! It took me about fifteen minutes to complete a search that had taken me a couple of hours and more than $100 to do on the CompuServe (using Dialog, really) last week." ==================== WHAT'S NEXT ?? SHORT TERM In the short term, I plan to update the patent titles to June 1994, as soon as I can borrow the June 1994 CASSIS CDROMs (which hopefully will be in the next few weeks - if you have a set I can borrow, let me know). I have a copy of MPEP as well as the International Patent Classification scheme, both of which I will break into many small files (and maybe map the International Patent Scheme into the USPTO scheme to allow patent title retreival). FALL/WINTER TERM The next step in putting patent data onto the Internet is to make all of the patent abstracts since 1970 Mosaic/Lynx accessible, with a WAIS and other search servers to allow keyword searching. Given the expected load such a Mosaic site will experience, I probably will outwear my welcome on UNC's Sun system. Thus a dedicated line to the Internet, a dedicated (and redundant) file server, 12 gigabytes of disk space, plus lots of patent data will all have to be acquired, plus overhead. I estimate it will cost $100,000 to acquire all of this equipment and data, and prepare the system for Mosaic access over the Internet, and take about a month to get up and running. If possible, I will be able to include the first claim. These gigabyte file sizes somewhat stretch Mosaic/bandwidth and retreival tools, so some software will have to be written to optimize multi-user retreival. In particular, these additional files will include tons of ASSIGNEE information which everyone has been requesting. There are about 2000 direct subscribing sites for my Internet Patent News Service, so if the majority of the individuals who have been receiving the service could donate $50, and companies $500, then most if not all of the funds can be raised. Since for the $50/$500, you are getting the equivalent of the $200/$300-a-year CASSIS CDROMs, the $600 Official Gazette (minus the pictures), and the $50/hr and up online patent abstract searching fees, in addition to my Internet Patent News Service, the requested donations don't seem too out of whack. And of course, larger donations will be warmly received and help speed up putting patent data onto the Internet. So check out the Mosaic site, and if you like what you see, and want more, please consider making a donation. Please send any donations to me at: Greg Aharonian, Internet Patent News Service, P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA,02178 and/or call me at 617-489-3727. I will be glad to provide invoices to any companies that want to have a bill for their records (call it patent search services rendered). LONG TERM The next stage after patent abstracts is that of putting up the full text to patent claims, a 20 gigabyte project costing $100,000, followed by the next stage of putting up the full texts to patent specifications, a 120 gigabyte project costing $200,000. For the time being, all I do is dream about such things. Beyond these stages are stages for foreign patent data, and development of patent preparation and analysis tools. But first, let's get the abstracts onto the Internet. GOVERNMENT CONTACTS Putting tens of gigabytes of patent data onto the Internet for free access makes it one of the largest, if not largest, such database on the Internet. As such, it will be a great boon not only to patent activities, but general R&D in the United States. As such, there should be one of more of the technology government agencies interested in supporting this endeavor. If any of you have contacts at the DOE/NASA/ARPA/NSF/NII/NIH/DOC/UN, please let me know or contact such people directly. Given the international use of the Internet, I expect many people around the world to access the US patent data, and hope that one of the UN educational/science agencies could lend support. LOCAL SERVERS For a modest fee, I will be glad to set up local servers that mirror the Mosaic site at corporations whose employees plan to make great use of the patent information I am making available. In the interest of decreasing the load on the Internet (and for those corporations not wanting their employees' searches floating over the Internet), consider having a mirror site setup on your local WANs/LANs. The current configuration requires 500 megabytes of space. In particular, there are many Patent News subscribers at IBM, HP, Motorola, HP and ATT where mirror systems seems prudent. DATA ACCURACY All of the US patent data I send out and store on the Mosaic server comes from the Patent and Trademark Office itself, either from the CASSIS CDROMs, or downloads from APS. For the most part, I do not alter the data in any way, so any errors that might occur in the data do not originate with me. For example, about 5000 patent circa 4,790,000 have their titles truncated beyond what I have to do for the server software. This is because the CASSIS CDROMs I used to acquire the patent titles had these truncated records. I plan to download data from APS to correct the problem. But beyond incidents like this, my data is as accurate as that of the PTO. FINAL APPEAL (Well not really). The technology existed last year to put up all of the US patent data onto the Internet for free public access at a very reasonable (in Beltway terms) cost, and can be done year-end with sufficient support. But to do all of this, I am going to need your support and help. I have taken this effort as far as I can on my own, and would like to go further. So think about the quality and quantity of patent information you have received to date, and the additional patent information such an expanded Mosaic site will provide you, and then consider making a donation to this effort. A little bit from a lot of people can go a long way, and the patent data is too important to wait for the government to figure out what the real value of the Internet is. Greg Aharonian Internet Patent News Service -- http://www.eff.org/~mech/mech.html Stanton McCandlish mailto:mech () eff org mech () eff org http://www.eff.org/ Electronic Frontier Fndtn. http://www.eff.org/~mech/a.html Online Activist
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- A new Mosaic site for patent searching (fwd) David Farber (Oct 12)