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Manhasset, N.Y. - Conducting patent searches is critical for engineering companies, but executing them often is either a tortuous process or an expensive proposition; EDS and Knight-Ridder's Dialog charge as much as $100 an hour to search their patent databases. Now, two sites on the Web are looking to make these searches easier and cheaper.
MicroPatent is providing on its PatentWeb site free full-text searching of recent U.S. patents-those published within the previous 10 days. Any other U.S. patents dating to 1974 can be downloaded for 25 cents a page.
Meanwhile, Source Translation and Optimization (STO; Belmont, Mass.) is building a Web site with an archive of U.S. patent abstracts from 1981 to 1989 that can be accessed free.
STO maintains what it claims is the largest software and hardware prior-art database in the country. It conducts prior-art searches and publishes studies of patenting practices in the United States and overseas. The company charges $200 for a patent prior-art search and $400 for a literature prior-art search. STO uses some of the proceeds to support its free patent-retrieval system, which it has been gradually building for two years.
PTO classifications
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) uses a classification scheme with four "supergroups"-electronic, chemical, engineering and mechanical- more than 400 main classes, and tens of thousands of subclasses.
At STO's site, if you want to search a category of patents, you must first know the class/ subclass code. STO provides a hyperlinked list of all the Patent Office classes; when you've found the class/subclass code, you can link to the abstract retrieval engine.
You enter the class/subclass code into the retrieval engine, which renders a list of all patents in the relevant category along with their patent numbers. You then enter the patent number into a separate retrieval engine, which supplies the abstract of the desired patent.
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