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American
Bar Association Journal
October
1, 2001
WHO
GOT THERE FIRST?: Internet provides search engines to power
patent-search Web sites
Attorney and engineer Frank J. Pita of Durham, N.C., won himself $ 10,000
when he dug up prior existence of a computer router that cast doubt on the
invention's patent. The money was posted by BountyQuest, the well-known,
Boston-based Internet search service that offers rewards for evidence that
proves a device is already available to the public.
It was "killer prior art," says Pita. Sites like BountyQuest are particularly
useful for those who are looking to license a patent, he says. They can beat the
bushes to see if there is any basis for an infringement suit, and it is a lot
cheaper than litigation.
"It's a healthy thing," says Pita. "Nobody wants invalid patents."
Fertile Field for Newcomers
The search itself isn't the only thing that's healthy. Also thriving is the
online intellectual-property search business. BountyQuest is only one of a
growing number of Internet services designed to assist attorneys and others in
learning about a patent or trademark. In fact, since its launch last year,
BountyQuest has expanded, adding a fee-based database search service, the Patent
Information Center.
While the online world is littered with dot-com bodies, IP search sites have
quietly and steadily been increasing in number and indispensability.
The Internet appears to be a fertile breeding ground for such services. It is
as if the World Wide Web and the global IP search have formed the perfect match.
"The Internet is well-suited for it," says McLean, Va., patent attorney Bill
Atkins. Once the investment is made in the databases, he says, the owners need
merely to maintain them. "You have something in inventory that people will
constantly want."
One recent entry into the patent-search world is PriorArt.org, a
collaboration between IP.com--a New York City-based search service--and the
Foresight Institute, a nonprofit technology think tank based in Palo Alto,
Calif. Launched this spring, PriorArt is both a search tool and a place for
staking a claim to an invention. Software developers can publish a brief
description of their software innovation in IP.com's OpenTech database, a
company spokesperson says. Also on the Internet is PatentCafe,
www.patentcafe.com, which has a Web-based magazine in addition to the search
engine.
Other services such as Kessler International, www.investigation.com,
automatically sweep the Internet for possible trademark infringements and report
to their subscribers, such as Washington, D.C., attorney Donald E. deKieffer. He
finds the service more efficient for trademark mining than typical Internet
search engines such as Google. A standard search engine "doesn't tell you more
than you already know," says deKieffer.
Kessler's searches look in the hidden computer codes, such as metatags, for
potential infringements.
Other companies in the trademark-search market are: www.nameprotect.com,
based in Madison, Wis.; and www.marksonline.com, based in Los Angeles. Each
offers free and fee-based services.
Lawyers say the free database sites are good places to start. Many are run by
government entities, including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, at
www.uspto.gov, and the European Patent Office, www.european-patent-office.org.
The PTO site lets users access a database of full-page images of U.S. patents
issued since 1790 and conduct a full-text search of patents issued since 1976.
Fee Sites Dig Deeper
Some lawyers switch to fee-based sites to perform more comprehensive
searches. Atkins, managing partner with Pillsbury Winthrop, says he starts with
the PTO site and then ventures onto a paid site for more information. His firm
has a contract with MicroPatent USA, www.micropat.com, which also has a
trademark service, Trademark.com.
Also joining the fee-based market is Delphion, an offshoot of IBM, whose
patent server has been highly regarded for years. The service, launched last
year, began by covering patents from the early 1970s. The site now has more than
40 million foreign and U.S. documents.
This year the service joined the Derwent World Patents Index, which offers a
database that links abstracts with original patents. Another fee-based company
is U.S. Patents, at www.patents.cos.com, run by the Baltimore-based Community of
Science. The service boasts of a database of 2.6 million patents issued since
1975.
Of course, for the adventurous, few sites compare with Bounty-Quest, which
has paid at least nine bounties totaling $ 90,000, says company president
Charles Cella. But Cella insists that the hunt opens up the traditional database
service by inviting a broader community to participate. "Just looking in patent
databases was not giving us a good answer," he says.
"There was a sense [that more information] was out there."
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