Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Google patents launched!

a_bab - 20-12-2006 at 14:26

Yes, our beloved google has a dedicated patent section now. Enjoy: http://www.google.com/patents

DeAdFX - 20-12-2006 at 15:22

Holy sweet mother of god... Thank you!!! I have a feeling those other free patent searches are going to lose a lot of traffic now.


O and no ads either w00h0)!!!

[Edited on 20-12-2006 by DeAdFX]

hinz - 21-12-2006 at 09:33

This is great!:D Thanks a_bab

Just write a chemical compond in the box and you'll get a bunch of patents mostly for it's preparation.

Perfect for people without access to those money thirsty pages where you need a to log in before seeing more than the abstract.

kmno4 - 21-12-2006 at 11:55

I do not understand your raptures.
Using espacenet.com gives the same results or better and gives possibility downloading PDFs (if available).

Nicodem - 22-12-2006 at 01:13

I also keep wandering why the hell people use all kind of crappy services instead of the official international site for patents (espacenet)? I never dared to ask but is there any rational reason for doing that?

Is it just me or that Google patent search engine only gives US patents hits? Also, I can't find the option for downloading the patent as PDF like at espacenet. The only advantage over espacenet I found is that you can search also the inside text of the patents instead of being limited to the title, abstract and category. But then I'm not sure that is much of an advantage when you want to search for some ubiquitous keyword.

Nicodem - 25-4-2007 at 12:08

Having been praising Espacenet in that old post above, I now have a problem with it… :(

Does anybody know of any free internet service that would allow downloading European patents larger than 50 pages? I mean something in the style of www.pat2pdf.org which is however only useful for US patents. There are a couple such services including other patents as well but I could find none free of charge. There is also some software that can do that, but each one I tried either had some annoying shareware limitations or was pretty much useless. Which program, preferably freeware, practical and small, do you guys recommend?

The problem is that Espacenet allows downloading all patents as PDF but only if they contain less than 50 pages. The newer patents are often larger than that and I find it annoying to read them on screen from Espacenet's interface. It would be much more practical to have them downloaded in a single PDF. The EP, GB, FR, etc. patents are the most problematic since the US and WO are pretty much covered by other sources even if larger than 50 pages.

Rosco Bodine - 25-4-2007 at 14:31

SnagIt is a capture program which might work . I haven't used any recent versions but it is one that might do it .

If you can view beyond the 50th page as an onscreen display , then you have actually already downloaded that pagefile , or else you couldn't be looking at it , so it is simply a matter of saving the file , albeit in a less convenient form . There is a workaround IIRC , but it is a royal pain to save each of the past #50 pages individually and then renumber each and reassemble them in sequence as a completion of the 50 which could be gotten as one download . I don't know if it is even still possible to do it like that anymore , but it used to be possible . As a last resort , you might try it if you have only a few of these and no other option .


[Edited on 25-4-2007 by Rosco Bodine]

Nicodem - 25-4-2007 at 22:16

I guess I should describe the problem in more details. Espacenet allows the viewing of any patents, US, EP, Soviet, Japonese, whichever, even if they are larger than 50 pages, however the "Save Full Document" at Espacenet is only available for documents shorter than that. This is what the FAQ says about the issue:
Quote:
How can I save a document?

For documents having less than 50 pages, click on "Save Full document" in the horizontal toolbar and follow the instructions. For other documents, "Document too large" will appear in the horizontal toolbar and unfortunately, at the moment, you will have to save this type of document one page at a time.

Saving one page at a time for a document of, let's say, 100 pages is a pain in the ass. As if this is not enough, the saved pages are not actually a one page PDF but a PDF containing 99 empty pages giving a "no data" error and one normal functioning page, hence if one would want to make a normal PDF of 100 pages one would have to extract the functioning pages and compile a working PDF. I rather use the Espacenet interface or print each page one by one than doing that!
I realize my problem is rarely a problem to others as well since most patents are <50 pages, however the pharmaceutical patents of the last 15 years are very often >50 pages and I just don't know how to download them unless they have a US or WO patent version.

Polverone - 25-4-2007 at 22:31

Can you post an example patent with this problem? I might be able to write a tool to handle it.

Rosco Bodine - 25-4-2007 at 23:08

Yeah post an example number and we can try to
hack ....er .... I mean formulate a workaround :D

A patch from Adobe could definitely solve the problem
and they might just already have one .

This limit is something that they are doing deliberately ,
to avoid the bandwidth burden of a duplicate download ,
which BTW with their original system wasn't any issue ,
because once acrobat has the file for viewing , it is
already downloaded in a temporary file . So before , when you saved it within acrobat all it did was copy to a save folder the already downloaded temporary file , which you were viewing . But hey that was too simple and this is the new improved ESPACENET :P

Nicodem - 25-4-2007 at 23:17

OK, here is an example of an EP patent, EP0346791, that has no US or WO version, only a JP version that suffer the same problem (WO can be downloaded from www.wipo.int, while US from www.pat2pdf.org so they represent no such problem from the >50 page limitation). Alternatively, just about any >50 pages patent can be used as an example.
I'm quite sure this limitation is to limit the burden of computing time for their servers as Rosco says.
Anyway, as you can see from the example in the place where the "Save Full document" usually stands there is only the "Document too large" notice.
If someone could make some kind of a script like the nice fellow at www.pat2pdf.org did for the US patents, which would however work by retrieving all types of patents from the Espacenet server, compile their pages into a single PDF and allow for download… well that would be just great.

Rosco Bodine - 25-4-2007 at 23:39

Actually it has nothing to do with bandwidth but was a sabotaging of the existing code and capability of acrobat
as an advance capability for a contemplated commercialization of the patent database . You can look but you can't print at all nor save but the one viewed page at a time , without a pay per copy subscriber download ticket . You can print from the saved page ,
but it does not automatically collate with any other pages
which only have empty frames . A bunch of editing is required even to manually reassemble the document ,
and it would take days to manually do a hundred page document .

I remember now this is what cause a furor when they were "upgrading" their service , and a worldwide protest
arose that it was no upgrade at all , but a crippling of the
existing service for which crutches would be sold .

I think Adobe worked with them on doing this dirty deed
and it is probably futile to try to crack it . A script could probably be written to defeat and convert the embeded
acrobat viewer , page by page , reverting it to a standard
acrobat format ...but I confess I don't know how to do it .

Good luck :D

S.C. Wack - 26-4-2007 at 01:52

I searched the German Patent Office (where I've found patents not found with espacenet before) for said patent/clicked the pdf link of the A1/300 dpi/load full patent/human verification/save a copy. The full patent of 67 pages/3.70 MB was saved.

stugrave - 26-4-2007 at 07:25

USPTO used with alternatiff plugin gives good results with small documents.

plus Alternatiff is free !

Rosco Bodine - 26-4-2007 at 09:14

@S.C.Wack

Wow , that looks like the old original DEPATIS interface ,
which can indeed access the database unrestricted .
I kept links for several of the member countries servers which delayed getting aboard with the " new improved "
(and crippled ) version interface , and continued to use the old interface until the last of them I knew about changed over to the "upgraded" version interface like the rest .

It looks like the Germans refused to get aboard with the changed version that everybody else adopted , so three cheers for them .

Having access to any server running the old version software is the best workaround , and you just nailed it .

Nicodem - 26-4-2007 at 10:51

Quote:
Originally posted by S.C. Wack
I searched the German Patent Office (where I've found patents not found with espacenet before) for said patent/clicked the pdf link of the A1/300 dpi/load full patent/human verification/save a copy. The full patent of 67 pages/3.70 MB was saved.

S.C. Wack, you trully are the best bibliomaster ever! You found the simplest imaginable solution to my problem. Thanks! ;)