Roy,
I don't know if the US coverage of names is complete or not but it seems to
date back to 1920 for four countries: Britain, USA, France and Switzerland.
I checked 125 patents at random intervals from 1920 for Britain and found
that 83% had applicant data -- so for Britain at least it is not complete,
although a good initial step (More data is in my regular Internet column in
the next issue of "World patents information"). It would be interesting to
hear about a similar sample for the USA, and I may do one if no one comes
forward. Inventors seem to be listed as well as applicants/ assignees but
for Britain they are included in the applicant field until the mid 1970s --
probably because they were in the same sentence in the patents and it was
too much trouble to separate them. However, many British patents don't
mention the inventor as this was not required at the time (until 1978 ?) and
it made changes of ownership easier not to mention them.
ECLA classification can be used to find German material from 1877, British
and French from about 1911, US, Swiss and Belgian from 1920, although
personal experience makes it clear that there are some gaps in coverage,
again -- but I am sure everyone knows about that. I agree that we need much
more information about what's present -- and why are there odd gaps ?
Comments from Esp@cenet (and other providers) about the data they have
placed on their database would, I am sure, be welcome.
Steve van Dulken
British Library
www.bl.uk/patents
-----Original Message-----
From: Roy Zimmermann [mailto:roy.zimmermann@medtronic.com]
Sent: 22 January 2002 22:31
To: marecik@bg.agh.edu.pl; jhickey@MICROPAT.COM
Cc: PIUG-L@derwent.co.uk
Subject: Re: Patents of Int. Meehanite Metal Co.
Judy Hickey's REPLY to the Meehanite Metal Company older US patents
assignment question leads me to pose a follow-up question. I knew that
the Micropatent PatSearch FullText database provides access to the oldest
fulltext US collection, back to 1836. I knew that it was created via OCR,
so the accuracy of some of the text indexing is less than marvelous,
especially the frontpage or bibliographic field indices. Can
Micropatent comment on which bibliographic fields have been vetted for this
1836-1971 US backfile? If so, how was this done?
I also noted that Steve Van Dulken responded based on the Esp@cenet server,
which points out that some portion of that backfile, at least from
1920-1971, is at least partially available for online searching. I
believe much of that backfile bibliographic & patent classification data is
also present in Questel-Orbit's PLUSPAT database. So I'd be interested in
comments from anyone from the EPO familiar with the Esp@cenet backfile
bibliographic/classified data set, or from Questel-Orbit, or from Steve Van
Dulken, about the degree of completeness of the bibliographic data available
pre-1976, both for US and older non-US patents on Esp@cenet or in PLUSPAT.
This boils down to how complete an answer you can get for how cheap for
assignee or inventor or patent class searching? Esp@cenet certains
provides outstanding value, since its free, but I'm never sure how complete
its data is, nor can one output search results very readily. Micropatent
& PLUSPAT are obviously not free, but both provide much improved search
engines, reporting & data output capabilities. This particular thread
seems like a good time to revisit the old
Why pay if its free on the internet hobby horse?
Roy Zimmermann
Patent Information Specialist
763-505-2527
763-505-2530 (FAX)
roy.zimmermann@medtronic.com
roy_zimmermann@hotmail.com
rzimmerma@aol.com
>>> "Judy Hickey" <jhickey@MICROPAT.COM> 01/22/02 02:44PM >>>
Dear Ms Gorak-Marecik and others interested in older US data:
Searching in our PatSearch FullText database, I find 132 patents mentioning
'meehanite.' All but three of them issued between 1929 and 1973. I can see
that some of them are not assigned to the
Meehanite Metal Company (or Corporation), but simply have a mention of
Meehanite somewhere in the text. The earliest patent, granted in 1929, is a
patent to Augustus Meehan, assigned to the Meehanite
Metal Corporation, and entitled "Method of Heat Treating Iron."
1836-1971 US fulltext data is available as a menu selection when you search
in PatSearch Fulltext. Because of the nature of the older text, pinpoint
accuracy is not possible for bibliographic fields,
necessitating closer inspection of results to determine where the search
term is found in the document. If you would like to know more about the
search options for this data, please let me know.
Best regards,
Judy Hickey
Agnieszka Gorak-Marecik wrote:
> Dear PIUG USERS,
>
> I'm looking for American patents of International Meehanite Metal
> Co., granted in the years 1960-1980. In USPTO database I can
> find three of them, but of course I can find only those which are
> granted after 1976. Using the name of asignee I can't find patents
> published in sixties and seventies. I would be very grateful for your
> help.
>
> Agnieszka Gorak-Marecik
>
> University of Mining and Metallurgy
> Main Library
> Department of Special Collecions
>
> Al. Mickiewicza 30
> 30-059 Cracow
> Poland
> tel.: +48 126173217
> e-mail: marecik@bg.agh.edu.pl
>
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