Steve - this idea has been around for a while. I commented on it to our
attorneys whilst at Zeneca, and it was also raised via the PTMDF I
believe. As Stu has commented, WIPO seem determined to do it, and cite
the availability of "CD-ROM equivalents" as justification. We (Zeneca)
understood that WIPO (Mr. Bartels) had agreed not to do this until the
ESPACE-WO disks could be issued nearly simultaneous to the publication
date. I felt at the time that this was not really a satisfactory
solution since they are not really browsable - I had a huge IPC stored
search set up to try to use the disks as searching tools, but some still
slipped through.
It looks like another case of "we know what the user really wants".
-- 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