Corporate Actions related to Patents

As reported by Hal Wegner and others, the following is the top 10 domestic patentees based on data from the IPO, and whether they are a member of the Coalition for Patent Fairness (CPF).

1. IBM, 4169
2. Microsoft, 2043 CPF member
3. Intel, 1772 CPF member
4. Hewlett-Packard 1,422 CPF member
5. Micron 1,277 CPF member
6. General Electric 1,243
7. AT&T, 820
8. Honeywell, 774
9. Texas Instruments, 755
10. Cisco, 704 CPF member

IP-Discover ties together four of the major free document providers, Espacenet, Depatisnet, WIPO, and USPTO. Use it to search for and download patents and applications. For example, you can search on Google for pre '76 US documents, and download them in bulk from USPTO. It's a commercial product, but a limited function demo is available. (Posted by Keith Nagel, author of IP-Discover)

• IP-Discover website

Google has an Advanced Patent Search page capable of truly fast patent searches. Apparently, it went live a month ago. Don't feel bad, a lot of people missed it. The searching functionality is limited, and the printing of patents is not easy, but it is the quickest way to get the full text and images of a patent displayed on your screen.

• News story