1 August 2010Patents

USPTO teams up with Google

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is encouraging analysis of the publicly available data it produces by forming a partnership with Google.

The two-year agreement will cost both parties nothing to maintain and the data will be free to access on Google’s website. Bulk data were previously available through the USPTO’s website for a fee.

The agency aims to ensure that it meets President Barack Obama’s Open Government Initiative, by increasing the availability of public data.

David Kappos, director of the USPTO, said: “An important element of that transparency is making valuable public patent and trademark information more widely available in a bulk form so companies and researchers can download it for analysis and research.”

For this purpose, IP professionals require the information in bulk and in a machine-readable format. The USPTO cannot currently provide these things through its own website because it lacks the technical capability, said Kappos.

Jon Orwant, engineering manager at Google, said: “It’s important to make data easier to gather and analyse, and when the data is free, that’s even better.”

Examples of the data available include patent grants, published patent applications and trademark applications.

The patent and trademark data are available now through google.com.

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