You will need to search the Inventor Annual Indexes from roughly 1955-1960
to determine if Karl Leibinger received any US patents during that time
period on a blood extracting device of any sort. That's the bad news.
The good news is that the Fondren Library at Rice University, where you're
located, is a patent repository library. I presume you checked already
then to see if the author/assignee indexes contain any Leibinger entries
during the 1950s. But if not, that's probably your only option at this
point. I did see that Karl Leibinger is also listed as assignee on a
couple of his more recent patents, so apparently Leibinger founded a
medical equipment & device firm in Germany.
Thus, the backdoor search for older patents & their cited references,
available only on Corporate Intelligence for the 1945-1971 period, didn't
work for this question. However, within the last 2 weeks, I've used CI's
fulltext backfile to identify patents by Albert Einstein on refrigeration,
Abraham Lincoln on a flotation device, along with several less famous
inventors' older relatives who held patents, but for which numbers weren't
readily known. So the capability exists to some degree, particularly when
you can then readily download the cited reference patent, regardless of
its age, to confirm you've got the real Einstein's patent. Patent
attorneys presenting talks to inventors groups seem to love to wow their
audiences with the celebrated inventor's patent, the old & unusual, etc.
Considering that I located & downloaded five or six such patents of
"reknown" in about 30 minutes, I often start with that approach before I
commence the drive to my local patent repository.
Those of us searching in the mechanical arts often must resort to such
secondary means to identify older patents. CLAIMS only spans back to 1963
for electrical/mechanical patents, so prior to 1963, Corporate
Intelligence's backfile is the only option I've been able to exploit with
much success. The "shoe search" feature that CI has added recently enables
constructing a new "shoe" of citing/cited patents, so it allows you to get
a quick frontpage view of the citing/cited links.
By the way, Mr. Rossmann, are you affiliated with the Patent Repository at
Rice? If so, do you know of any other online options via the PTO that help
address the older mechanical/electrical patent searching gaps?
Roy Zimmermann
Patent Information Specialist
612-514-3304
roy.zimmermann@medtronic.com
>>> "Brian W. Rossmann" <bwr@rice.edu> 02/24/99 11:54am >>>
I have two questions on which I would appreciate any help that the list
may be able to offer:
1. Is there a way to find out if there is an English language equivalent
to a German Patent from '57 (since Derwent's coverage does not extend this
far back)? The patent I have is DE Nr.955891; January 10, 1957;
Blutentnahmeschnepper, to Karl Leibinger, Muhlheim/Donau (Wurtt.).
2. Does the British Patent Office publish a list of patents for which
the maintenance fees have not been paid (as USPTO does)? I need to find
out if the maintenance fees have been paid for GB 2239664A (published
10.07.1991.)
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
*******************************************************
Brian W. Rossmann
South Central Intellectual Property Partnership at Rice
The Fondren Library, MS 220
Rice University
P.O. Box 1892
Houston, TX 77251-1892.
713.285.5196 phone
713.524.1163 fax
bwr@rice.edu
http://www.rice.edu/Fondren/SCIPPR/