[AT] Semi OT: Patent search on Google

[Larry D Goss]

WOW!  Thanks, Mike.  I needed that -- really.  I'm currently doing some 
restoration on a grand piano and am having difficulty establishing the 
configuration of some missing parts.  I have to build them from scratch and 
having the patent drawings available is going to be a help.

It looks like they're using a super version of Adobe Acrobat for this work. 
What I see in the general action of the site has a definite look and feel of 
Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional.  On the OCR misspelling, the search engine 
does miss some of the occurrences of a character string from time to time, 
but I have also found that the search engine uses the OCR equivalent of the 
ASCII characters that you type, so therefore it makes the same mistakes 
during the search.  In searching for my own name using the Adobe engine, 
"Larry" comes out as either "Larry" or "Lany" and it finds both spellings.

It's too bad that the search engine on the Google patent site doesn't 
recognize columnar formatting.  The Adobe engine does.  What I'm tempted to 
do is to file the results of a patent search, convert it to a straight PDF 
file in Acrobat, and run the search again in that software to do a 
comparison.  But not today.  I have too many other irons in the fire.

Larry

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Sloane" <mikesloane at verizon.net>
To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 8:42 AM
Subject: [AT] Semi OT: Patent search on Google


> The list is a little slow today, so I thought I would forward this message 
> from an antique tool list. I have not followed up on this at all. I would 
> think that it might be useful for researching old farm implements and 
> maybe tractor accessories.
>
> Mike
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Hi All
>
> A little news that should bring a smile to
> the faces of collectors of all kinds.
> (well hopefully not tax collectors <G>)
> Google has archived all 7 million patents in the
> USPTO database, and scanned the pre 1975
> pages with OCR (optical character recognition)
> to create searchable documents from them.
> All is not perfect yet however, as the scans
> resulted in many spelling or date errors that
> could cause the occasional missed search.
> However what's a few thousand errors in a
> batch of 7 million ???. This is an amazing
> development, and will, with a little practice
> make these records available with a fraction
> of the effort that was previously required.
> The format is much like the Google search
> that we are all familiar with, and has both
> the standard and advanced configurations as well
> The links for each are shown below.
> Enjoy!
>
> Regards
> Art.
>
> <http://www.google.com/patents?>
>
> >http://www.google.com/advanced_patent_search>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------
>
> -- 
> Mike Sloane
> Allamuchy NJ
> <mikesloane at verizon.net>
> Website: <www.geocities.com/mikesloane>
> Images: <www.fotki.com/mikesloane>
>
> I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man.
> It is us. -Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989)
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