Nancy,
Great answer. I am from IP.com and couldn't have explained it better.
A few additional comments may help and explain why certain ways of
publishing is "safer" and more effective than others.
For instance publishing on your website is great to share information with
those that visit your website, however it is not so great if your are
"defensively publishing" strategically IP publishing or just trying to set a
priority date or really anything that would involve legal matters. For one,
it will be difficult to prove in the courts that the documents on your site
have been on your site consistently; that is, not up one month then down the
next (this would be an accessibility issue); another would be just having
the ability to prove that although your document is what you are saying
today, has it always been that EXACT document (meaning have you added
improvement or changed it while it was available to the public?) -- due to
potential problems like this, and many others, is why IP.com goes through
great lengths to notarize, fingerprint and track for continuity of the
documents on the system. Not to mention the hardcopy journal that gets
printed every month and catalogued in different libraries.
The previous are just a couple of the "legal" issues (as you can imagine
once you bring in the law you bring in sooo many different scenarios and
issues that IP.com had to overcome, with the help of a few law firms, before
we went "live" to the public).
Many other issues come to mind, one of the first would be cost...it is
costly to publish on your own website, just ask those companies who are, or,
more likely, were. Another, publishing on your own website also doesn't
allow you to publish anonymously, some publishers do not want others to know
what they are working on so they publish without authorship. But perhaps the
worst part about publishing on your own website (maybe 'worst' is too strong
a word, I am really just using that term if your goal is to prevent others
from getting patent protection on what you are disclosing) is that the
people who really need to see that data the most just don't. Those people?
The worldwide patent examiners. IP.com is not only free to search for anyone
with access to the internet, in addition we also work closely with all of
the major patent offices to make it as easy as possible for them to search
and find the data published. That may be simply by supplying them with
special USER IDs for individual examiners, and hardcopies for their
libraries or even, like with the EPO and others, indexing our data every
month and feeding it into -in the case of the EPO - a system like esp@cenet.
Getting the data into the hands of those that can make a difference. It is
almost like preventative medicine.
Defensive Disclosures can be quite a powerful and effective tool if used
methodically and strategically. You mentioned that IBM published on their
own site, this is true...over 80,000 publications! Did you know that it is
the second most referenced site on US patents with just US Patents
referenced more. Pretty incredible when you think about how many issued
patents those disclosures have altered (just think about how many were never
issued because of them). In the last year or so more and more articles from
very credible sources (New York Times, Financial Times, MIT Technology
Review and more) have been written about the value of publishing and how
they expect this trend to increase dramatically because of budget cuts and
just the business sense publishing strategically makes. (If you haven't read
them and would like to I would happy to point you to them.)
On another note that may be of interest you IP.com and Derwent Information,
Ltd. are launching a co-branded Defensive Publication Web site. Through this
agreement, users of the Derwent Web site - http://www.derwent.com - will now
be able to conduct prior art searches in IP.com's Prior Art Database, as
well as publish their invention disclosures online using IP.com's Web-based
publishing tools.
What I will leave you with after this lengthy response is that it is
probably a good idea to start searching the IP.com database during your
prior art searches. We have a variety of companies publishing and although
the database isn't huge, the data is VERY unique, it is growing rapidly and
it is getting searched by the patent examiners - plus it is very easy to
search, and FREE.
If you have additional questions please do not hesitate e-mailing me
(tcampbell@ip.com) or drop by my booth next month in Berkeley.
Tim
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-piug-l@derwent.co.uk [mailto:owner-piug-l@derwent.co.uk]On
Behalf Of Lambert, Nancy (NELA)
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 12:39 PM
To: 'piug-l@derwent.co.uk'
Subject: IP.com and related disclosure mechanisms
I received the question below from Natalia Lebedeva via the PIUG Comments
and Questions form, and sent her the answer following her question.
However, both Natalia and I would be glad to hear from anyone who knows of
other disclosure mechanisms available or cares to comment further on the
ones I've mentioned. (In my case, I plan to write a "Better Mousetrap"
column on the subject and would be glad of any input.)
If you answer to the PIUG list, could you also cc Natalia?
Thanks,
Nancy Lambert
nela@chevrontexaco.com
510-242-3161
--------
Name- Natalia
Email- natalia.lebedeva@lamrc.com
Organization-
Address-
Address-
Address-
Comments- Does anyone know any alternatives to
http://www.ip.com/journal.jsp ?
Natalia,
As I understand it, IP.com is a web-based disclosure journal. Its function
is to give individuals and companies a platform on which to disclose to the
public, and thereby establish as prior art, technology that they want to
prevent others from patenting, whether or not they want to patent it
themselves (in which former case they will have filed their own patent(s)
before publishing the disclosure). These are sometimes called "defensive
publications." In some cases, the disclosers may remain anonymous.
A number of companies have private disclosure journals for this purpose. IBM
is notable, and their journal is searchable on the Delphion site
(www.delphion.com). Xerox also produces one that they distribute "around
the world to libraries and patent offices." More info on their journal is
available at http://www2.xerox.com/research/xdj/.
The journal Research Disclosure has been around for a long time, too.
Derwent used to index Research Disclosures and include its references in the
Derwent World Patents Index with the "country code" of RD. They no longer
index Research Disclosures, and I don't know if any other database includes
it. You an find more information about it at
http://www.researchdisclosure.com/.
Of course, individuals and companies have always been able to file defensive
publications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. These are now
called Statutory Invention Registrations (SIRs); they used to be called
Invention Disclosures. They are less expensive than patents to apply for
and obtain, and of course they convey no enforceable intellectual property
rights; they just give the technology to the public.
And, of course, by the laws of most patenting countries, any publication
available to the public has disclosure value.
This is everything I can think of off the top of my head.
Nancy Lambert
for PIUG
nela@chevrontexaco.com
510-242-3161
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