Re: Need Papers From Patent Office
By Bob Ebert
Ed Gloeggler asked about obtaining patent papers on Sandel's Violano-type inventions. No, you do not need a lawyer, but you do need patience and a budget, depending on how deep into it you want to go.
Recently I have been involved in doing some patent work related to a book I am writing on a non-musical instrument related topic. Here is what I did, and found out.
1) You need to find a library that is U.S. Government Depository library that maintains patent records. (I live near Cleveland, Ohio; the Cleveland Public Library is excellent for that and was a big help. Major cities' libraries and libraries of some universities may also be of help because many of them are depository libraries. However, not all depositories maintain patent files. You may have to do some telephoning.
2) You will find printed indices by year that enable you to look up a patent number by name of applicant, company name, and type of product. This is time consuming if you do not know the years in which a patent was granted. But, when you find the patent, it will give you the date and patent number. At Cleveland, I believe the printed indices go up to either 1972 or 1977 and then the indices are computerized.
3) Once you have the patent number, you can look it up on microfilm (which a patent library will have) and make photocopies from the microfilm printer machine. At Cleveland these are 10 cents a copy. Patents can run anywhere from a couple of pages to 10 or 12 pages, so take a lot of coins with you!
4)If you want to go beyond obtaining the obtaining of the patent and want to get a "Patent File History" (which would have all the correspondence, application, challenges, etc.), then life becomes more complex and expensive. I have not done this because of the cost, but within the past month was investigating it and found the following:
-- You want a thing called a "File Wrapper and Contents" for a given patent (you must know the patent number and other critical information: who it's assigned to ,etc.)
-- You want to contact the Certification Branch of the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C. The phone numbers I have are (703) 308-9735 and (703) 308-9726. I talked to these folks and they told me in early December that a Patent File History costs $150 and takes 25 working days to obtain. They accept MasterCard and Visa and you can fax orders to (703) 308-7048.
Well, good luck and happy hunting!
Bob Ebert
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(Message sent Sat 28 Dec 1996, 21:35:45 GMT, from time zone GMT-0500.) |
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