RE: Re : US NTIS inventions

Berks, Andrew (andrew_berks@merck.com)
Tue, 07 Sep 1999 11:08:51 -0400

I'm under the impression (which may be wrong) that the flow of US government
inventions to NTIS has stopped, and that they haven't done it for at least
the past five years. I base this on my regular reading of the Derwent
farmdoc abstracts, and I haven't seen an NTIS publication in many years, and
also my contacts with the licensing department at my former employer, where
I was enlisted on several searches of US government inventions offered for
license. I spoke to someone a few years ago at a technology transfer office
for the NIH and he indicated that they were in the licensing business and
would not be publishing NIH patent applications through the NTIS in advance.
I don't know if this is true across all technologies, or just the NIH, or
just work that someone deems especially valuable.

Andy Berks

Merck & Co.

> ----------
> From: Stephen Adams[SMTP:stevea@magister.co.uk]
> Sent: Saturday, September 04, 1999 4:49 PM
> To: keegan@bp.com
> Cc: PIUG Listserver
> Subject: Re : US NTIS inventions
>
> Hello Rachel
> Last time I looked, the NTIS series were abstracted in Govt. Reports
> Announcements, and (confusingly) assigned a report number from the PB
> series as well as having the psuedo-patent number which, as you rightly
> point out, is the series number + application number.
>
> I heard from another list that the Dept. of Commerce has announced that
> it intends to close NTIS, which might explain the lack of recent
> publications in this field. Can anyone else on the list confirm this?
>
> I would also be interested in finding out how database producers intend
> to distinguish between an NTIS published application which appeared in
> series 6, and a "genuine" 6-million series utility patent when the main
> US number range hits this number. Obviously they will be years apart,
> but that's never stopped anyone ordering the wrong number before!
>
> When I was at Zeneca, we used to get the section C (Agdoc) full
> specifications on microfilm from Derwent, and these occasionally
> included an NTIS series document when this was the basic. The complete
> text itself is published in the form of a government report i.e. no
> standardised "patent-like" front page to them. The same documents are
> also covered by Chem Abs, and both Derwent and CAS can supply copies, as
> can BL Patent Express.
>
> By the way, I suspect that Derwent practice was actually not quite the
> same as the official numbering. I seem to remember that they appeared
> in the database in the 6nnnnnn range, even when the true application
> number had crossed into the series 7 and even 8 range.
>
> --
> Stephen Adams
> Magister Ltd. - Patents Documentation Consultancy
> 62 Norton Road, Reading, RG1 3QJ, GB
> Tel/fax: +44 (0)118 926 7981
> e-mail: stevea@magister.co.uk
>
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