In a notice sent on 3 November 2010 to subscribers of its Patent Search mailing list, IP Australia has annouced the forthcoming launch of full text searching for Australian patent specifications.According to the recent announcement:
Full text searching will be initially launched in a beta environment by the end of 2010. The added functionality will provide customers the ability to conduct a text search of open to public inspection (OPI) Australian patent specifications back to 1904. ...
The initial release of the text searching capability will include approximately 50% of the full collection. Extra specifications will be added progressively with the full collection planned to be available for searching by the end of March 2011.While IP Australia has sometimes been accused in the past of lagging behind its peers in other jurisdictions, providing full text searching of over 100 years of patent publications is a great leap forward which will make the Australian office a world leader. We note that the USPTO search system, for example, provides full text only back to 1976, with users being forced to rely upon private providers, such as Google patents, to search within earlier documents. However, the content of such freely-available search services inevitably lags behind the PTO.
The enhanced text search facilities of the AusPat system will bring IP Australia a significant step closer to its goal of delivering an integrated "one-stop-shop" for Australian patent searching.
Further information is available from the Patent Search Strategy web page.
Before You Go…
Thank you for reading this article to the end – I hope you enjoyed it, and found it useful. Almost every article I post here takes a few hours of my time to research and write, and I have never felt the need to ask for anything in return.
But now – for the first, and perhaps only, time – I am asking for a favour. If you are a patent attorney, examiner, or other professional who is experienced in reading and interpreting patent claims, I could really use your help with my PhD research. My project involves applying artificial intelligence to analyse patent claim scope systematically, with the goal of better understanding how different legal and regulatory choices influence the boundaries of patent protection. But I need data to train my models, and that is where you can potentially assist me. If every qualified person who reads this request could spare just a couple of hours over the next few weeks, I could gather all the data I need.
The task itself is straightforward and web-based – I am asking participants to compare pairs of patent claims and evaluate their relative scope, using an online application that I have designed and implemented over the past few months. No special knowledge is required beyond the ability to read and understand patent claims in technical fields with which you are familiar. You might even find it to be fun!
There is more information on the project website, at claimscopeproject.net. In particular, you can read:
- a detailed description of the study, its goals and benefits; and
- instructions for the use of the online claim comparison application.
Thank you for considering this request!
Mark Summerfield
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