Legal Research

May the IP Force Be With You

Posted on April 09, 2008
According to press reports, George Lucas and his company Lucasfilm are suing Andrew Ainsworth, a London-based prop designer, for copyright infringement for selling replica Star Wars stormtrooper armor. Ainsworth, who produced costumes for the first Star Wars movie in 1976, is disputing the copyright...

Advice for High-Tech Independent Inventors

Posted on April 04, 2008
As a patent librarian, it's easy to become too comfortable with the stereotype of the independent inventor as someone who tinkers with simple inventions, such as toys and garden tools. After all, many people who seek our help are students and first-time inventors with little technical training, not neurosurgeons and electrical engineers...

Esp@cenet Improvements in 2008

Posted on April 04, 2008
The latest edition (1/2008) of Patent Information News, the European Patent Office's quarterly newsletter on patent information, documentation and searching, is now available.Page 10 includes a list of esp@cenet improvements planned for 2008. They are: 1...

Guitar Hero Hits Sour Note

Posted on March 31, 2008
Last week Nashville-based Gibson Guitar filed a patent infringement lawsuit against MTV Networks, Harmonix and Electronic Arts, makers of the popular Guitar Hero video games. Gibson claims that Guitar Hero violates a 1999 patent for a similar technology...

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Edison Wasn't the First

Posted on March 31, 2008
On the original Star Trek series, one of the running jokes was ensign Chekov's tendency to claim that this or that technology was "invented in Russia". Well, he may not have been right but the popular notion that the most celebrated inventions of the 19th century were the products of lone (American) inventors is definitely wrong...

WHAM-O's 60th Anniversary Kid Inventor Contest

Posted on March 30, 2008
The new issue of WIPO Magazine has several interesting articles, including one on the 60th anniversary of the WHAM-O toy company. Wham-O is best known for introducing the hula hoop to America in 1958, followed by Frisbee flying discs, Slip 'n' Slide and Superball...

Patenting the Atomic Bomb

Posted on March 30, 2008
Many thanks to Danianne Mizzy of the University of Pennsylvania for sharing this NPR story on the role of patents in the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s. Many of the scientists (and their universities) involved in the Manahattan Project, including Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, Ernest O...

U.S. Patent Counts, Q1 2008

Posted on March 30, 2008
The USPTO published a record-breaking 77,962 patent applications (A docs) in Q1, an 11 percent increase over the same quarter last year. This was a strong rebound from the 73,450 A docs published in Q4 2007. Approximately 1.7 million plant and utilty patent applications have been published since 2001...

Paris Convention and Public Access to Patents

Posted on March 28, 2008
This year is the 125th anniversary of signing of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property, one of the cornerstones of the modern international industrial property system. The treaty was signed in Paris by representatives of 11 countries on March 20, 1883...

Review: Japanese-English Chemical Dictionary

Posted on March 26, 2008
Japanese-English Chemical Dictionary: Including a Guide to Japanese Patents and Scientific Literature. Edited by Markus Gewehr. Wiley-VCH, 2007. 680 p. $230 ISBN 978-3527312931 My library just received a copy of this very impressive reference work. The bulk of the book consists of a dictionary of more than 60,000 Japanese scientific and technical terms...

USPTO Class Order 1876 - Class 73: Measuring and Testing

Posted on March 25, 2008
The USPTO has published Classification Order #1876 affecting Class 73, Measuring and Testing. This is the generic class for processes and apparatus for making measurements or tests of any kind. New mainline headings in the class include:112.01 Turbine engine113...

Spark-IP: Patent Search Tool

Posted on March 16, 2008
High-quality patent databases are so commonplace on the web these days it's hard to get excited about yet another offering. Sure... there's always room for improvement, but how many patent databases does the world really need? Apparently, it does.Spark-IP was launched last October as an "eBay" for intellectual property owners to advertise their inventions and technologies available for licensing...

Tupperware Patents

Posted on March 13, 2008
The U.S. economy may be sputtering, consumer confidence is tanking, and food and energy prices are at all-time highs. But there's one company that sees a silver lining in all this gloomy news. Tupperware, the 62-year old company famous for its plastic food storage products, knows that when times are bad, it's sales go up...

In Search of the Perfect Battery

Posted on March 10, 2008
The Economist has published an excellent article on the history of automotive battery technology. It notes that electric cars were common in the first decade of the 20th century until the invention of the electric starter in 1912 made internal combustion engines, which provided better range and power, the dominant technology...

New Classification Order - Class PLT

Posted on March 10, 2008
The USPTO has issued a new classification order (#1875) affecting Class PLT (Plants). The order establishes about 100 new subclasses under a new main heading called "Herbaceous Ornamental Flowering Plant (Nicotina, Masturtium, etc.)".

PCT Filings Set New Record in 2007

Posted on March 08, 2008
2007 was another record-breaking year for international patent application filings, according to a recent press release by the World Intellectual Propety Organization. A total of 156,100 applications were filed last year, a 4.7 percent increase from the year before...

USPTO Patent Manual Archive

Posted on March 08, 2008
The USPTO has made available all editions and revisions of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) back to 1948. The original (un-numbered) edition of 1948, the Manual of Patent Office Procedure, included extensive material previously published by the Patent Office Society...

2008 Inductees to National Inventors Hall of Fame

Posted on February 17, 2008
The USPTO and National Inventors Hall of Fame (Akron, Ohio) have announced the 2008 inductees into the NIHF. The seven living inventors inducted are:Ruth Benerito for wrinkle-free cotton (55+ patents)Amar Bose for improvements in audio technology (30 patents)Nick Holonyak, Jr...

Google Patents Update

Posted on February 13, 2008
Google Patents now includes US published applications and patents through at least the end of 2007. Google engineers have added a filter to the advanced search form that allows you to retrieve only issued patents or applications. However, there are still numerous problems with the search engine...

Manual of Patent Examining Procedure Online

Posted on February 13, 2008
The USPTO has made available scanned copies of all editions and revisions of the Manual of Patenting Examining Procedure (MPEP) from 1948 forward. Previously, only the most recent editions were available online. This collection will be useful for locating historical information on US patent documentation, numbering systems, classification and prior art rules.

PatentMonkey Update

Posted on February 12, 2008
The patent search portal PatentMonkey.com, which I reviewed last February, has been acquired by Patents.com, a new firm headed by venture capitalist Robert Monster, PatentMonkey founder Paul Ratcliffe and Steve Pinkos, former deputy undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and deputy director of the the USPTO from 2004-2007...

2007 Top U.S. Patent Assignees from ISIClaims

Posted on January 21, 2008
Last week IFIClaims, a patent information company owned by Walters Kluwer Health , released its annual list of top U.S. patent assignees for 2007. According to the report, the USPTO issued 157,284 utility patents last year, a decline of about 10 percent from 2006...

IPI-ConfEx 2008 - International Patent Information Conference

Posted on January 20, 2008
The final program for IPI-ConfEx 2008, an international patent information conference, is now available online. IPI-ConfEx is scheduled for March 2-5 in Seville, Spain and will feature a of presentations from EPO and WIPO staff, patent information vendors and corporate patent searchers...

Fictional Brands

Posted on January 20, 2008
Last Sunday's Toronto Star had an interesting story about fictional brands from film and literature that have inspired real-life products. Some examples include HOLIDAY INN hotels, said to have been inspired by the 1942 Bing Crosby movie of the same name, and BRAWNDO energy drink, a fake brand from Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy...

Infringement = Triple Word Score

Posted on January 19, 2008
An AP story reports that Hasbro and Mattel, makers of Scrabble(R), are unhappy with an unauthorized online version of the game called Scrabulous. The companies, which share worldwide rights to the boardgame, have sent cease-and-desist letters to the two brothers from India who created the online version which is very popular on Facebook...

Public PAIR Verification System

Posted on January 12, 2008
The USPTO has implemented a new verification system for users accessing Public PAIR (Patent Application Information Retrieval). Users must now enter a two-word verification code in order to access the system. The system is meant to block bots and spiders...

Everyday Edisons - Season 3

Posted on January 08, 2008
Everyday Edisons, a show about inventing that debuted on PBS last year, has announced its casting calls for season 3. The first casting call will be in Atlanta on Jan. 12. Other cities in the schedule include San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago and Boston...

New Classification Orders, #1867-1874

Posted on January 03, 2008
The USPTO has issued eight new classifications orders since Oct. 1, 2007, an unusually large number for a three-month period. Classes affected include:711 - Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory714 - Error detection/correction and fault detection/recovery715 - Data processing: presentation processing of document, operator interface processing, and screen saver display processing506 - Combinatorial chemistry technology: method, library, apparatus435 - Chemistry: molecular biology and microbiology374 - Thermal measuring and testing365 - Static information storage and retrieval360 - Dynamic magnetic information storage or retrieval318 - Electricity: motive power systems

Chinese Patent Databases, EPC 2000, etc.

Posted on January 03, 2008
The December issue of Patent Information News has several interesting and useful articles on free patent databases from China; the impact of the European Patent Convention (EPC 2000) on patent information searchers; and patent information from Asia.

USPTO Discontinues Another Paper Publication

Posted on January 01, 2008
According to a notice published in the Federal Register, the USPTO is discontinuing the paper version of its Patent and Trademark Office Notices effective December 25, 2007. The Notices, which are also published in the weekly Official Gazette, include announcements on USPTO policies, fees, mailing addresses and patent attorney registration...

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