Committees

Audio Patents Project Report, 2006-08-20

Audio Patents Project Report, 2006-08-20

George Brock-Nannestad, Project Leader


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

GB-N 2006-08-20

AES - Audio Engineering Society