The USPTO and National Inventors Hall of Fame (Akron, Ohio) have announced the 2008 inductees into the NIHF. The seven living inventors inducted are:
The inductees will be honoured in an official ceremony on May 3.
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. For example, it is not possible to retrieve published applications by number. And classification searching is very problematic. A search on USPC 903/906 retrieved only 5 hits in Google but 417 hits in the USPTO databases. A search for inventor name "Mihal Lazaridis" retrieved 62 patents (with the "issued patents" filter on) and 81 published applications (with the "applications" filter on) for a total of 143 documents; the same search with not filter retrieved only 137 documents.
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.
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. According to the Patents.com website, the new service will "provide the most comprehensive worldwide source of patent data - to include 450 million searchable indexed patent pages available in 15 native languages." The launch is anticipated in the first quarter of 2008.
