1 Improving access to British Abridgments of Specifications
Since the last formal report 2005-05-22 the European Patent Office has
for its esp@cenet patent retrieval system systematically accessed the
original Abridgments in such a way that the text is made available in
the abstract field when the historical UK patent in question is called
up, accompanied by one (hopefully relevant) drawing. The time period
extends well back into the 1870s. This means that a lot of the work
that was envisaged is now available to persons happy with using the
esp@cenet. The caveat is that if a particular patent was abridged in
several classes of the Classification System, we cannot be absolutely
sure that the Abridgment is the one that pertains to audio technology.
However, if in doubt do read the complete patent!
In order to acquaint users with the esp@cenet and to the corresponding
but independent US PTO system, GBN is making available a
PowerPoint® presentation on the neighboring subject area of musical
acoustics patent retrieval (originally presented at the Minneapolis
meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in 2005). These brief
User's Guides contain full web addresses.*
In order to find the relevant numbers to access via esp@cenet an
ongoing listing of relevant UK (GB) patents is also attached to the
present report.*
* These items are not, in fact, attached to this project report, but
they will be posted on the Historical Committee web page Real Soon Now
-- J McK
2 Retrieving the pages of the AES Journal containing the Reviews of
Acoustical Patents
The logistics of this part project have proved more difficult than
expected, the number of relevant pages in JAES being 648, so that
physical handling becomes more than leisure work. For this reason it it
proposed to investigate if permission can be obtained to obtain the
relevant Reviews in electronic form from the Acoustical Society of
America. This requires precise patent numbers (an estimated 4000
total), and volunteers for the listing of these are invited.
(Note by J McK: As I have informed George, the "back of the book"
part of the AES Journal will, in fact, available to him .)
3 Providing access to PDF versions of complete US patent documents
Again, this is quite feasible via esp@cenet. There may be a rights
issue to be sorted out, however, and this approach has not been
investigated to date.
4 In the longer term make room for personal comments - this is an
ongoing undertaking, and volunteers are invited
