There are a number of issues here. Concerning section II, anyone
getting the ESPACE-WO disks will have noticed that the correction
documents are being included now. This can sometimes be significant
reprints or sometimes trivial front page corrected versions. In all
cases, the new front page from the disk includes a footnote referring to
the section II entry in the corresponding Gazette, which contains more
detail of what exactly has been entered. It beats ploughing through
both original and corrected document to pick out the changes !
For section III, my answer would be YES they are used, particularly the
IPC index. Unlike the EP bulletin, there are no IPC cross-references in
the body of the Gazette at present - only one entry at "main" IPC. If I
want to do a check of all cases with a given IPC, the section III index
is the only place to do it. I'm more dubious about the index by
country, but certainly by IPC and to a lesser extent by applicant ARE
useful.
In any event, a reduction of 10% by total elimination of these sections
looks like cheese-paring to me. I doubt whether it would save the
Gazette even if WIPO could be persuaded of the usefulness of the
sections - they're after more savings than this, it seems.
-- 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