Patent and Trademark Information: Uses and Perspectives

Citation

van Dulken, S. (2005), "Patent and Trademark Information: Uses and Perspectives", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 73-74. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330510578822

This book states that it “covers historical, practical, business and research aspects of the use of patent and trademark information in the United States and in countries worldwide”. That is an ambitious target for a book of 182 pages. It is certainly an important subject, as many who need such information neglect it, or fail to find relevant information, or to interpret it correctly.

The book consists of nine essays by different authors, mostly with American perspectives, all on patents except for two on trademarks. It is apparently meant for novices. The first essay ought to have explained patent documentation but is instead an admittedly fascinating chapter about the usage of Axis patents in the Second World War by American companies.

The following essay is about the “seven steps” of research recommended to determine if an invention is new. While very good as far as it goes, it only involves searching American patent literature, even though the presence of foreign published “prior art”, whether in patents or other literature, would invalidate attempts to get a patent in the USA.

Another chapter discusses the free Esp@cenet^® database from the European Patent Office, which is the web resource that many use to find patent information (http://ep.espacent.com). It is not the author's fault that the format of the database is now quite different, with much improved display formats. I would have expected him, however, to have mentioned the value of the ECLA (European Classification) which is available on the database.

Other essays are on the importance of regional patenting systems; on using American patent sources, including an interesting case study of studying trends in GPS (global positioning system) technology; and on tracing historical patents or patents for genealogy purposes. They make an uneasy and incomplete combination of advice on business and on patent searching, with the possibility of more extensive searching being carried out by experienced searchers on powerful priced databases being omitted, as is litigation, a major aspect in its own right with a lot of web data.

The emphasis on using electronic sources is well merited, but the impression is given that it is possible to do it all yourself. I would also have liked explanations of how each of the major patent systems is published, numbered, indexed and so on: there is not even one page showing what the front page of a patent looks like, with its typical summary, abstract and bibliographical information. Something like Introduction to Patents Information (Ashpitel et al., 2002) is needed by those who wish to search and analyse patents.

By comparison, the two chapters on trademark information are better balanced, though here too an explanation of the system for registering trademarks would have been useful background.

In conclusion, while this book contains some useful and interesting information, it omits much essential information for beginners, is too biased towards American data and suffers from a lack of unity, being written by different authors. The availability of sources on the web has also moved on a lot since 2001 when the material was written.