My colleague David Newton spotted a brief note about this in the October
issue of "CIPA", the British patent attorneys' newsletter, and I have
tracked down the source, which is available in Adobe format at
http://www.wipo.org/eng/document/govbody/wo_pct/pdf/pct24_10.pdf.
This is the text of the report following the PCT Union meeting, 16
September-1 October. Pages 7-8 explain that subscriptions are down by
30% over the past 15 years (but was it breaking even: or is it a public
good ?). Money would be saved by merging the French and English versions
into a single bilingual version.
It would have been nice if there had been consultation of the poor
searchers -- perhaps I missed something in the Gazette ?
Those who want quick-reference consultation/ browsing, as is used often
here at the British Library, will just have to use electronic formats.
At present PCTs take a long time to come out due to the printing methods
used: apparently this will change in January so material should come out
a lot faster.
According to "CIPA" the abstracts (and drawings ?) will be available on
the Internet. For free ?
Does anyone else have any more information on this ? Perhaps someone