Jed Margolin wrote:
The purpose of the Abstract of a U.S. patent is to
provide search terms. It has no other value.
I am, of course, aware of this. The reason I've been posting the
abstracts is that often they are good summaries of what is in the patent
or application and can help someone determine if they should read the
actual patent. Also, an abstract can be skimmed while claims are usually
written in such tortured text that it takes a great deal of effort for
the average person (or lawyer) to figure out what is meant by them.
Patent applications that are published before they are examined
(and allowed) have the same value as a publicly available
published article.
You are, of course, right. It should also be noted that many
patent applications do not, in fact, ever result in patents. However,
patent applications have one nice property that is different from "mere"
articles. That is that the author of a patent application is required by
law to represent that the methods described are "novel." On the other
hand, many articles simply present a repetition of well known data.
Thus, patent applications can be a good source of information on new
techniques as well as more obscure previously disclosed methods. Thus,
they can be useful reading if the intent is to understand the full
breadth of the spam field. Note also that since a patent application
*might* turn into a patent, it is also useful to have some warning of
what might become encumbered in the future.
bob wyman
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