Has this obsoleted patent searchers? NO! First, patent content on the Web
is limited primarily to U.S. patents, though EP & PCT documents can easily
be downloaded as images. The EPO has made some data available over the
Web, but not as completely as U.S. patents, whether from the PTO's Website,
IBM, or CNIDR. Other foreign patents, when available at all, are limited
to recent collections only. Open literature databases of comparable scope
to those loaded on commercial online hosts are mostly in the biomedical
field, and even then, are not searchable with the same speed or precision
as the same file on a commercial host. Compare MEDLINE on any of its
various "free" Internet servers to the same file on DIALOG or OVID. FREE
may be a good price, and for a private inventor with few financial
resources, is MUCH BETTER than a cursory search in manual indexes. But if
the object of a prior art search is a reasonably complete review of patent
& open literature published throughout the world, then the Internet has
become an INEXPENSIVE, EASY STARTING POINT. Besides, don't you enjoy
conducting searches based on several "highly relevant" documents more than
those based on the often vague descriptions given by phone or e-mail, by
inventors whose interest & ego incline them to hold back on what they tell
us.
Do the various Internet "free" sources eliminate the need to access
commercial online services & value-added patent databases such as CLAIMS or
DWPI? Perhaps for the private inventor, who wasn't accessing those
databases previously due to cost or lack of knowledge, the Internet means
will supplant whatever manual indexes were most frequently used at research
libraries or Patent Repository Libraries. But for R&D employees of
corporations, the proverbial "end-user" of online information, I believe
most will use Internet access to U.S. patents as a starting point, but will
supplement that with access to open literature & foreign patents from
commercial online services. But those commercial online hosts MUST ADOPT
MORE REASONABLE PRICING if they are to survive long-term. I think patent
searchers are less threatened by the Internet than are traditional online
price structures. Why should a searcher, professional or end-user, pay
$2-$3/minute plus $1-$3/record for online information when much of that
content is porting over to Internet access, not for FREE, but for REDUCED,
FIXED PRICE access directly from database producers, or from journal
publishers.
roy.zimmermann@medtronic.com
Patent Information Specialist
612-514-3304 FAX: 612-514-3233
>>> md <102337.1326@compuserve.com> 07/07/97 08:48pm >>>
Hello everyone!
I was describing the IBM patent website to a chemist and he said
"Oh it's just like Dialog..." I did my best to define the differences,
but what are the specific differences between:
the WWW USPTO, IBM, CAS and Micropatent patent web sites and
the patent databases such as Derwent, IFI, Patfull etc. on commercial
databases?
This fellow seemed to think that the patent searches he could do for
himself on the "free" (some are not free) patent databases on the
web were the same as the $$$ searches I run from commercial
databases.
How do you all respond to this perception from our clients that
the "free" patent web sites are the same as the commercial databases?
Was all our training for nought?