Errors in Patent Publications

Whilst reviewing today's US Pregrant publications I happened to notice
errors in the published documents that will frustrate searchers for
years to come.

We all see these kinds of mistakes with alarming regularity, and I am
only spurred to write to PIUG because I happened to see two silly =
errors
within seconds of each other

US 20050072292 "Stringed Instrument Instructional Aid for Locating
Finger Placement. for Guitar and Bass Musical Scales"

This has a totally irrelevant abstract :-
"An composition exhibiting a desired value of magnetic susceptibility,
which can be used to fabricate components in an NMR device, and method
thereof, wherein the composition comprises a metal ion selected from =
the
group consisting of Gd+3, Fe+3 and Mn+2 and an amorphous material using
a ligand or chelating agent to solubilize the metal ion throughout the
marphous material, wherein the magnetic susceptibility of the
composition exhibits a desired value at cryogenic temperatures such as
nearly zero susceptibility at temperatures at or below 77° K. "

I wonder to which application this abstract really belongs ?

And secondly, US 20050074255 "Dielectric Film Forming Method" I admit
this might not be an error by the USPTO (unlike the one above) - =
perhaps
the applicant gave it a wrong or misleading title....

As far as I can see the abstract , claims and patent is all about
exhausting heat whilst creating images with copy-machines, laser
printers etc. and not about forming dielectric films... indeed the word
"dielectric" ONLY appears in the title itself.


I cannot believe that out of the 4512 pregrants issued today that these
are the only two mistakes and I happened to notice both of them! We
technology trackers see this all the time ( I remember Stu Kabak would
often draw attention to these mis-steps). I am also sure that other
patent issuing authorities are not blameless - but I admit that I =
notice
far more from the USPTO both grants and pre-grants - is this the truth
or just my illusion?

Has anyone a handle on the extent (frequency) of these kinds of
typographical errors which will remain with us evermore? This does not
include the very error prone US Class or IPC coding that is even more
frequently incorrect or misleading on pre-grants - even though USPTO
says the IPC/USCLASS concordance algorithm is said to be "much better
thesedays"


Andy Gillanders
  



Received on Thu Apr 07 2005 - 23:30:29