United States Patent and Trademark Office

U.S. Patents. This file, produced by Derwent, Inc., covers U.S. patents from 1971 to the present. The database iacludes all bibliographic and front page information and the text of all claims. (Prom 1971 to 1974 the claims from many patents were not available from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) source tapes, and therefore are not iacluded.) The complete cl aim text can be searched from 1971 but can be ptinted only from 1982. Tides and patentee names are present ia their original form, aeither expanded nor standardized. There is no enhanced iadexiag. Examiner citations are directly searchable, and USPTO classification is updated when the tapes are received from the Patent Office. 

United States Patent and Trademark Office, Guide for the Preparation of Patent Drawings, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1993. 

United States Patent and Trademark Office, [Internet]. URL http //www.uspto.gov/, accessed 1-11-2002. 

Today, nearly every important reagent or method reported in the literature has a patent or patent application associated with it, especially if it has potential commercial value. A search of the patent databases, such as the United States Patent and Trademark Office (http //www. uspto.gov/) or the European Patent Office (http //ep.espacenet.com/) for key words or the potential names of inventors can provide a list of any existing issued patents or patent applications related to a bioconjugate technique or compound. In addition, a fee-based service such as Delphion is particularly effective at finding patents related to any subject matter (http //www. delphion.com/). 

Moynihan KL. United States Patent and Trademark Office, NeXstar Pharmaceuticals, Inc. USA, Patent no. 5,589,189 (1996). 

The utilization of patent information is, of course, promoted by diverse patent authorities. The European Patent Office (http //www.european-patent-office.org/) provides a service called esp cenet, which is easily accessible via the Internet (http //ep.espacenet.com/). In addition, inventors might conduct online file inspections via a service called epoline, which can be reached at http //www.epoline.org/. The user gains direct access to all published European patent applications and patents stored in electronic form. Patent information services are also offered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (http //www.uspto.gov/). 

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) provides a service under the Disclosure Document Program to give evidence as to the date of conception of an invention [5]. An inventor may disclose the conception of his invention in a Disclosure Document to the USPTO for a nominal fee. This document will be held in confidence by the USPTO. After a period of two years it will be destroyed unless a related patent application is filed within these two years. They caution that the Disclosure Document is not a patent application. The date of its receipt in the USPTO will not become the effective filing date of any patent application subsequently filed [6]. 

Figure 2.1 taken from United States Patent and Trademark Office Performance and Accountability Report - Fiscal Year 2007 . 

PALADIN, PALADIN PRESS, and tbe "horse bead" design are trademarks belonging to Paladin Enterprises at>d registered in United States Patent and Trademark Office. 

Patented procedures and sequence information affect decisions about testing. It is not always clear whether a technology or sequence has been patented or, if so, who owns the patent. It is thus advisable to check with the investigators who first described the sequence and to review the patent database and pending patent databases (United States Patent and Trademark Office Home Page www.uspto.gov). 

It must be mentioned that the patentability of animals has given rise to much discussion. The United States Patent and Trademarks Office (USPTO) following the decision in Ex parte AUen 2 USPQ 2nd 1425 (1987), regards unnaturally occuring living organisms including animals, as patentable. 

The patent offices worldwide have opened their databases to the public there is no better place to start the search for patentability than with these free databases the same databases that provide additional services and literature search are packaged by other vendors. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (1) has created one of the world s largest electronic databases that includes every patent issued recently, published applications are also available in the database. Scientists are strongly urged to develop expert skills in interacting with the database of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The search at United States Patent and Trademark Office can be most beneficial if the scientist learns how to use the patent classification system. (Tutorials are available at the United States Patent and Trademark Office website alternately, please consult Filing Patents Online A Professional Guide by Sarfaraz K. Niazi, CRC Press 2002). 

Second to the United States Patent Office, the largest database is accessed through the European Patent Office, where one should conduct a similar classification search as suggested previously for the United States Patent and Trademark Office (2). The World Intellectual Property Organization (3) offers many useful features including complete details of the Patent Cooperative Treaty and its gazette. The Canadian Patent Office can be reached at the website mentioned in Ref. 4. 

Derwent (6) is one of the most widely used databases, from which the United States Patent and Trademark Office examiners benefit as well. 

A product claim that defines the claimed product in terms of the process by which it is made A product made by the process comprising of steps. .. Patentability based on product itself and NOT on method of production. If the product is the same (as prior art), using another process does not make it patentable. If examiner shows that product appears to be the same or similar the burden shifts to the applicant United States Patent and Trademark Office bears lesser burden of proof in making out a case of piima facie obviousness. One-step method claims are acceptable, but claims where body consists of single "means" elements are not acceptable. 

Protein and nucleic acid sequences are submitted electronically to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to avoid the introduction of errors in printed documents and to simplify the job of examining patent claims that include biosequences. Short sequence listings are printable in the USPTO s full text database, but for longer sequences the electronic sequence records are stored in the Publication Site for Issued and Published Sequences (PSIPS), located at http // seqdata.uspto.gov/. 

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Washington DC United States Patent and Trademark Office. URL http // www.uspto.gov/. Provides information on the patenting process, U.S. and International patent law and regulations, resources for independent inventors, search aids, and fee-based online delivery of patents. Includes U.S. patent applications and issued patents back to 1790. The full-text of patents is available since 1976. Includes help on viewing the images and searching by U.S. classifications. Classifications and related information, including a U.S. to International Patent Classifications concordance and an overview of the classification system, are available from the USPTO s Office of Patent Classification. Available online. 

A patent issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office can grant the patent owner substantial economic advantages. Section 154 of the Patent Act sets forth in brief the scope of the patent right ... 

It is important for companies to keep the patent system in mind, whether or not they choose to seek patents for their own products. When technical personnel create useful products or processes that seem to them to be significant advances on the prior art, the assistance of patent counsel very often becomes useful. First, companies need to determine whether use or sale of these new processes or products might infringe someone else s patent. This may involve a search of the relevant records of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (and of the patent offices of any foreign countries where the products may be used or marketed). Second, if the product seems to technical personnel to be novel and significant of the art, companies may want to consider whether to apply for a patent. In such a situation, a search should be made at the Patent and Trademark Office to determine whether the invention seems likely to be patentable. How extensive a search should be before a patent application is filed, as well as the decision whether to seek a patent at all, may depend upon how valuable the invention seems. For a very important item, patent lawyers may also conduct searches of the relevant trade literature to see whether the invention has been anticipated but not patented. Some companies monitor the... 

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