Patent Info News Supplement / EPO Discontinues DVD Products

The EPO is now publishing a supplement with its Patent Information News newsletter that covers data and technical topics formerly covered in the INPADOC Patent News. e.g. Legal status codes, country coverage, etc. The first issue contains a nice overview of patent procedure in the U.S.

The latest issue of PIN also states that the EPO will cease production of the ESPACE WORLD DVD at the end of 2010; this product contained digital copies of PCT applications. Three other DVD products, ESPACE ACCESS, FIRST and ACCESS-EPC, are also slated to disapper. The data contained in them is now be available in a new online database called the Global Patent Index (GPI).

Thus marks another step in the long retreat from DVD as a media for disseminating patent info.

Patented Gas Mask Bra Wins Ig Nobel Award

Dr. Elena Bodnar of Chicago has received an Ig Nobel Award for her design of a bra that converts into a pair of gas masks. Dr. Bodnar was granted US patent 7,255,627 B2 on Aug. 14, 2007.

US Patent Counts, Q3 2009

The USPTO issued 47,042 patents in Q3, a decline of 3.2 percent from the previous quarter and the lowest total this year. The number of published applications was also down slightly, dropping to 76,040 from 81,288 in Q2. Despite this slowdown the USPTO is still on track to exceed last year's total of 312,854 published applications. More than 2.2 million applications have been published since 2001.

Table 1. Quarterly Patent and PGPub Counts*

2009 ..... Patents (B) .....PGPubs (A)..... Total (A + B)
Q1 ..... 49,227 ..... 83,855 ..... 133,112
Q2 ..... 48,596 ..... 81,288 ..... 129,884
Q3 ..... 47,042 ..... 76,040 ..... 123,082

*Based on preliminary weekly data from the USPTO website. Totals may change after the fact due to withdrawn patents and published applications.

Table 2. Weekly Averages and Medians (Q3)

Patents ..... 3,619 ..... 3,729
PGPubs ..... 5,697 ..... 5,768

Table 3. Number Ranges for 2009, Jan. 1 - Sept. 30

Utility patents ..... 7,472,428 - 7,596,812
Reissues ..... RE40,613 - RE40,925
PGPubs ..... 2009/0000001 - 2009/0241233
Designs ..... D584,026 - D601,325
Plants ...... PP19,613 - PP20,374
SIRs ..... H2,228 - H2,232

Patent Map from FreePatentsOnline

FreePatentsOnline has launched a new patent mapping service called Local Patents. The service combines inventor and assignee city data from 3 million US patents and published applications with a map of the US generated by Google Maps.

It's very cool. You can drill down from the state level to city/town. The number of patent documents in a given geographic area is displayed in a circle ranging from purple (for high numbers) to green (for low numbers). Clicking on the city/town will list the titles of the documents granted to inventors/assignees in that location.

There a some glitches. A few patents do appear in Canadian cities, but not enough to account for all the US patents granted to Canadian residents. Some of these appear to be correct, but others are obviously wrong.

Design Patent #600,000

Design patent no. 600,000 was issued this week to Goal Zero of Spanish Fork, Utah. The patent protects the design of a battery system.

Robotic Fish Farms

Fish farming is under attack from environmentalists who claim that it pollutes bays and inlets and spreads infectious diseases like salmon anaemia. The main problem is that cages used in most fish farms are fixed in place, which concentrates fish waste and uneaten food on the sea floor. Clifford Goudey, a researcher at MIT, has invented a fish pen propelled by robotic engines, which will allow fish farmers to deploy their pens in a wider area and along natural fish migration routes. Goudey has patented a number of fishing-related inventions, including a mobile ring fish pen. (US5617813)

Patents related to floating fish farms are classified in ECLA A01K61/00F.

Underwater Logging

A story in the Globe and Mail this week reported on a project to harvest dead trees, including valuable teak and mahogany, from a man-made lake in Ghana. The total value of the wood is estimated at up to $3 billion. This isn't the first time that entrepreneurs have proposed recovering wood from the bottom of lakes and rivers. By some estimates, millions of logs were lost in North American rivers during log drives in the last century. Several small-scale recovery projects in BC and the State of Maine are underway. It made me wonder if anyone had patented technology for underwater logging.

Patents related to forestry are classified in ECLA classification A01G23. So a logical esp@cenet search strategy might be to combine A01G23 with the keywords "underwater" OR "submerg*". This retrieves six documents, including three by inventor Cyril Burton of Castlegar, BC. Burton's earliest patent was issued in 1973 for an "Underwater Saw for Stump and Tree Removal"; his most recent, a "Submersible Logging Device", was issued in 1999. A Canadian application published in 2003 (CA2635367) describes a "method and apparatus for underwater tree cutting and retrieval" that involves a remote-controlled submarine and inflatable airbags.

New Leadership at the USPTO

The USPTO has a new leader. On Thursday, August 13, David Kappos was sworn in as the Undersecretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. He's the 52nd person to hold that position since it was established in 1836.

The appointment and confirmation of Kappos was fairly speedy: only 6 months and 24 days after President Obama's inauguration. President George W. Bush took almost eleven months to appoint James E. Rogan head of the USPTO in 2001. Bruce Lehman, President Clinton's first Commissioner of Patents, was sworn in on Aug. 11, 1993.

How long will Kappos stay? The average term in recent years is between 2-4 years. Jon Dudas, Kappos' immediate predecessor, served from Jan. 2004 to Nov. 2008 (including 5 months as acting director). James Rogan, President Bush's first USPTO chief, served barely two years, from Dec. 2001 to Jan. 2004. Q. Todd Dickinson also served just 2 years, Jan. 1, 1999 to Jan. 20, 2001, including almost a year as acting director. Bruce Lehman served from 1993 through the end of 1998, almost 5.5 years.

Kappos faces a number of tough challenges including a huge backlog of pending applications, declining revenue due to lower filings and fewer paid maintenance fees, delayed patent reform legislation and disatisfaction among the USPTO's 6,000 patent examiners.

The longest serving USPTO directors of the last hundred years were Thomas E. Robertson, who served during the Harding, Coolidge and Hoover administrations from 1921 through 1933, and Conway Coe, who served from 1933 through 1945. The director with the shortest tenure was Melvin Coulston, who served just one month, March 3 to April 5, 1921.

"Investing in patents is no country for old men."

... That's the message one pundit sees in this week's patent infringement ruling against Microsoft. The article makes some interesting points about the cost of litigating a patent lawsuit and speculates on why Microsoft (or any high tech company) might chance a lawsuit rather than license a new and unproven technology.

i4i won a huge legal victory. But at what cost?
Fabrice Taylor
Globe and Mail, Aug. 14, 2009

Les Paul, 1915-2009

World-renowned musician Les Paul, whose invention of the solid-body electric guitar transformed popular music in the 1950s and 60s, died on Aug. 12 at the age of 94. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005.

Mr. Paul held at least two patents related to electric guitars. The first, which is mentioned in his NIHF bio, was issued in 1962. (US 3,018,680) The second, US 3,725,561, was issued ten years later in 1973. Both have been cited in numerous patents over the last forty years.

Many musicians have followed Les Paul's example and patented inventions. Eddie Van Halen, co-founder of the 1980s mega-band Van Halen, has two patents (US 7,183,475 and US 4,656,917) and a design patent for a guitar peghead, US D388117. And in 1993, Michael Jackson patented (US 5,255,452) a special shoe that would allow a wearer to lean forward beyond his or her center of gravity, thus creating "an anti-gravity illusion".

Patent Ruling Against Microsoft

The big news today is the patent dispute between software leviathan Microsoft and i4i, a small (30 employees) Toronto-based software developer. Two years ago i4i sued Microsoft for using its patented technology in Microsoft Word. Yesterday, a judge in Texas overseeing the case ordered Microsoft to stop selling Word in sixty days.

The patent in question is US 5,787,449, a "method and system for manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other." Basically, i4i invented a way to turn the information in any word processing document into a searchable database by mapping the metacodes, such as XML, in the document.

Although relatively few patents are cited in later patents, i4i's patent, which was issued in 1998, has been cited by a dozen patents assigned to IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Hitachi, Xerox and Netscape. This is a strong indication that i4i's technology is important.

It's interesting to note that computer-controlled text processing technology goes back more than 50 years. i4i's patent is classified in USPC Class 715, which covers data processing related to documents, interfaces and screen savers. About 20,000 patents and 20,000 published applications are classified in 715. The earliest patent classified in 715 is US 2,762,485, issued on Sept. 11, 1956, for an "automatic composing machine." The patent describes a system for printing text using a computer-controlled type-setting machine.

US Assignment Data in espacenet

The June issue of Patent Information News states that the EPO is in the process of reloading US assignment records into its legal status database. When the project is finished US patents in esp@cenet will be linked to more than six million assignments dating back to 1981. Assignment data has been available for some US docs in esp@cenet, but much of the data was corrupted by technical problems. I assume that this includes all the data available on the USPTO's web assignment database and Cassis ASSIGN, although both give a slightly earlier start date of August 1980.

Nortel's Patent Plum

Nortel Networks, one of Canada's leading telecommunication technology companies during the 20th century, is bankrupt and in the process of selling off its assets, including its hefty portfolio of thousands of patents and other intellectual property. This week a high profile spat broke out between two rival bidders, Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, and mobile phone giant Ericsson. Nationalism is partly to blame (RIM is a Canadian company) but also at issue is the fate of Nortel's patents. RIM is keen get Nortel's patents related to wireless LTE technology.

By rough count, Nortel's patent portfolio includes more than 3,500 granted U.S. patents, some 760 published patent applications, and approximately 1,000 Canadian patents and pending applications. Thousands more were granted under its former name, Northern Electric Co., which it officially changed in the early 1990s. This is probably one of the largest patent firesales in history.

Class 310 Reorganized

The USPTO has reorganized Class 310: Electrical Generator or Motor Structure. Details are provided in Classification Order #1887. Class 310, which was created in 1953, is a bit atypical in that it is a residual class intended to cover technology related to electrical generator or motor structure not classified elsewhere. Which means that searchers may need to consult other related electrical and mechanical classes.

There are currently about 65,000 patents and 13,000 published applications classified in Class 310.

One Giant Step for Mankind? Moon Ads?

While the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of the first manned-mission to the moon, an entrepreneur in Utah wants to patent a system for creating ads on the moon.

David Jones, owner of Moon Publicity of West Valley City, Utah, has filed a U.S. provisional application for "Shadow Shaping," a system that uses robotic vehicles to carve product names, logos and web URLs into the surface of the moon. The serial number of the application is 61/150,054, which means that it was probably filed in October or November of 2008. Jones has one year to file a regular patent application based on his provisional. Provisional applications are not published, so it may be more than a year before the world gets to see the details of his invention.

Inventions relating to advertising are generally classified in Class 40, Card, Picture or Sign Exhibiting. This includes skywriting and ground advertisements designed to be seen from aircraft.

Patent Models on Display at Harvard

Harvard University's Science Center has a new exhibit of 19th century American patent models. The exhibit, which is called "Patent Republic," is on display until December and features about 75 patent models from the collection of Susan M. E. Glendening, a New York collector.

From 1836 to 1880, The U.S. Patent Office required inventors to submit a model of their inventions with their patent applications. The models were kept on public display at the Patent Office and became a popular tourist attraction. By the 1870s, however, maintaining the collection, which had grown to hundreds of thousands of models, became a serious burden on the office. Some 87,000 models were destroyed by fire in 1877. In the 1890s, the Patent Office began placing models in storage and eventually the office disposed of the collection, with several thousand models going to the Smithsonian Institution and the families of inventors. The rest were sold or discarded.

Patent models were required in other countries during the 19th century, but most had abandoned the practice by 1900. In Canada, patent models were no longer required after 1892, although the Commissioner of Patents reserved the right to request a model. Some countries continued to require models for certain types of inventions. Germany, for example, required models for firearms and skates and Switzerland required models for firearms and watch movements.

Patent models are highly prized by some collectors. In 1979, Cliff Petersen, a retired engineer, bought about 35,000 models with the intent of establishing a museum. In addition to the Glendening collection, other privately-owned patent model collections include the Rothschild Petersen Patent Model Museum, which contains some 4,000 models obtained from the Petersen estate.

See also "Patent Models Strange Odyssey" by Theresa Riordan, New York Times, Feb. 18, 2002.

Patent Statistics and Economic Development: Pros and Cons

Patent attorney Stephen Nipper and fellow blogger Chris Blanchard make some interesting comments on the use and misuse of patent statistics as measures of economic development and technological innovation. Both point to the case of Idaho, which in recent years has been ranked #1 in patents per capita thanks to the presence of Micron and HP, two patent powerhouses, in Boise.

I agree that patent statistics, like most statistical measures, can be misleading. In Canada, for example, tiny Yukon, pop. 31,000, ranks #1 in patents per capita, compared to the more populous and industralized provinces of Alberta (3.2 million), Ontario (12.5 million) and Quebec (7.5 million). Blanchard argues that patent statistical outliers like Yukon should be omitted or at least accounted for in economic development studies.

Nipper and Blanchard's criticism is a valid one, but I think it's wrong to completely dismiss patents as a useful (but indirect) measure of economic development. A large number of patents issued to a particular region or city might suggest a large population of highly educated engineers or successful independent inventors. For example, inventor Solly Angel, author of The Tale of the Scale, used patent statistics to decide what city might offer the best support network for a first-time inventor. He settled on New York because of its high concentration of patent attorneys, inventors, consulting engineers and suppliers.

Most patent offices publish annual patent statistics. The USPTO also publishes numerous reports on patent activity by organization, technology and geographic area. The WIPO collects and publishes patent statistics from around the world.

US Patent Counts, Q2 2009

The USPTO issued 48,596 patents in Q2, down slightly from 2008, and published 81,288 applications, 4.6 percent more than the same period last year. Approximately 2.1 million plant and utility patent applications have been published since 2001. The USPTO is on track to publish more than 330,000 applications in 2009, which would be the largest total on record.

Plant patent no. PP20,000 was issued on May 19, 2009 for a new and distinct type of Cuphea plant, a type of flowering shrub. The inventor is Christiaan Unger of Worms, Germany, who is credited with three other plant patents. Design patent no. 600,000 is expected in October. Only two statutory invention registrations have been registered this year, which suggests that their popularity is waning. SIRs are, for all intents and purposes, simply published applications. They may be cited as prior art but carry no patent rights.



Table 1. Quarterly Patent and PGPub Counts*

2009 ..... Patents (B) .....PGPubs (A)..... Total (A + B)
Q1 ..... 49,227 ..... 83,855 ..... 133,112
Q2 ..... 48,596 ..... 81,288 ..... 129,884

*Based on preliminary weekly data from the USPTO website. Totals may change after the fact due to withdrawn patents and published applications.

Table 2. Weekly Averages and Medians (Q2)

Patents ..... 3,738 ..... 3,764
PGPubs ..... 6,253 ..... 6,228

Table 3. Number Ranges for 2009, Jan. 1 - June 30

Utility patents ..... 7,472,428 - 7,555,787
Reissues ..... RE40,613 - RE40,817
PGPubs ..... 2009/0000001 - 2009/0183289
Designs ..... D584,026 - D595,475
Plants ...... PP19,613 - PP20,148
SIRs ..... H2,228 - H2,229

Inventor of Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed, 1916-2009

The inventor of the Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed, John Houghtaling, died last week at the age of 92. Houghtaling patented his invention in 1962 (US 3,035,572), and founded Magic Fingers, Inc. to commercialize it. His company installed millions of units in hotel and motel rooms across America in the 1960s and 70s.

Houghtaling wasn't the first inventor to conceive of a mechanical device to relieve weary or weak muscles. In 1869, Allen L. Wood of New York City, patented an "apparatus for treating diseases" (US 97,944) that consisted "of certain mechanisms, whereby circular or rotary motion... is made to perform several operations of rubbing, kneading, and giving vibratory and other action to muscles and various parts of the system." Wood's device (see below) looks more like a medieval torture rack designed to extract confessions than heal the sick.

Other similar devices are found in USPC Class 601, Surgery: Kinesitherapy, subclass 40+.

AusPat v1.3 Enhancements

IP Australia has announced the release of AusPat v1.3, the new web-based Australian patent database that replaced the PatSearch system in early 2008. AusPat v1.3 enhancements include (quoting from the release memo):

1. "e-Journal functionality has been incorporated into AusPat with the introduction of a new search field (called “Publication”) allowing users to search by Publication Action and Journal* Range.
2. The “Acceptance Published Date” search field has been removed. To search for applications by Acceptance Published Date use the new “Publication” search field.
3. Search and display of limited publication history for PATADMIN applications.
4. Ability to launch electronic Journal.*
5. Link to add AusPat to Instant Search Box for users with IE 7."

* The Australian Official Journal of Patents