The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued a press release today about their partnership with Google:
Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) David Kappos announced today that the USPTO has entered into a no-cost, two-year agreement with Google to make bulk electronic patent and trademark public data available to the public in bulk form. Under this agreement, the USPTO is providing Google with existing bulk, electronic files, which Google will host without modification for the public free of charge. This bulk data can be accessed at http://www.google.com/googlebooks/uspto.html.
The USPTO does not currently have the technical capability to provide this public information in a bulk machine readable format that is desired by the intellectual property (IP) community. This arrangement is to serve as a bridge as the USPTO develops an acquisition strategy which will allow the USPTO to enter into a contract with a contractor to retrieve and distribute USPTO patent and trademark bulk public data. The contractor will be capable of acquiring this bulk data and providing it to the public.
Read the full 2 June 2010 press release for full details, including the type of information to be made available. Google also posted the news on their Google Public Policy Blog.
But wait, there's more! The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has launched a free site for access to its databases called WIPO GOLD. See the WIPO 1 June 2010 press release for more information.
[Hat tip to Intellectual Property Watch for the post Double-Barrelled Databases: WIPO GOLD and USPTO-Google.]
Pretty cool. It's good to see the Government actually making something more accessible. This has been needed for some time.
Posted by: Ron Stone | June 03, 2010 at 12:15 PM