Current Awareness - Patent Abstracts

Each month, the U. S. Patent Office grants approximately 20,000 patents. Some may shape your entire industry. However, you know it wouldn't make sense to spend valuable research and development time going through all 20,000.

While keywords can be used to trigger notifications, key words are notoriously unreliable in the world of patents. Would you expect a ball-point pen to be called a "writing utensil", "marking tool", or, our favorite, an "ink dispenser"? If you tried to include all of the various words that might be used, you will still have way too large a collection to go through.

Instead, the US Patent Office relies upon technology classification to gather and organize related patents. To date, they have divided more than eight million patents into more than 150,000 technology cubby-holes.

Quill & Disc identifies and selects relevant technology classifications for you. We try to include not only your core technologies, but also what we refer to as the "feeder technologies". These are technologies that have been repeatedly used to advance your core technologies. Awareness of advances in these feeder technologies can help you to make the next inventive step ahead of your competitors.

Then we deliver abstracts to you in your preferred media that include select bibliographic information and exemplary drawings from patents that may be relevant to you. The format of the abstracts makes reviewing the latest patents a breeze.

We don't stop there. Over the years we have developed a very advanced system of review that does not add any burden to you. As your interests evolve, we will recognize the change and adapt the content to meet your interests. In addition, in the event of an acquisition or divestiture, a simple phone call is all you need to make, and we'll take care of the rest.

Awareness of recently granted patents will soon become even more important, as new patent legislation is phased in. Under the new laws, there will be a relatively short post-grant period for opposition.