Get U.S. patent in a PDF file
How to search and save a U.S. patent as a single PDF file.
Why U.S. patent ?
USA is a very large market. Countries around the world want to export goods to USA.
Imported goods in USA are protected by patents registered with the USPTO.
The U.S. patent system has been established since the time of the fist president.
Contains over 187,170 issued patents (since 2004).
Interesting statistics
USPTO approves 18,000 new patents per week.
73% of key technologies in each industries were patented by independent inventors not those working for large corporations.
Over 50% of patent applications was abandoned by their inventors before approval.
Only 1% of Issued patents made their ways to commercial production and marketing.
You can search for U.S. patent information over the internet from around the world.
How to utilize knowledges from USPTO?
You can search and read U.S. patents at USPTO website http://patft.uspto.gov.
The U.S. patent system include:
+ Patent application (not approved yet).
+ Issued patent.
* Expired or abandoned patents (no more pretection)
* Fully-protected patents.
Inventions registered in U.S. patent system mostly not register in smaller countries.
People outside USA can search, study, and utilize U.S. patents legally both in academia and commerce as long as those inventions have not patented in their countries.
+ Expired patents can be fully utilized freely.
+ Un-expired patents can be commercially used outside
protected countries. However you cannot export goods
to the protected areas.
Searching for a U.S. patent.
Directly at USPTO website http://www.uspto.gov
+ A patent can be displayed and downloaded one page
at a time in form of a TIFF (*.tif) image.
+ Inconvenient.
+ Fee can be paid for a full service by USPTO.
Indirectly through pat2pdf web site http://www.pat2pdf.org.
+ Pat2PDF is a non-profit organization operated
by donated funds and website ads revenues.
+ With permission from USPTO.
+ You just need to fill in a patent number and the system
will load all related TIFF images into a single PDF file
for your download.
How to use a free patent download system at www.pat2pdf.org.
Search for a patent of your interest at USPTO.gov or Google.com, record its patent number.
Go to http://www.pat2pdf.org, fill in the patent number
and wait a little bit.
Download the full patent PDF file onto your PC.
Opem and read the patent using Acrobat Reader.
Example
Suppose you want to search for a patent about automatic fish feeding machine. Enter "patent automatic fish feeder" in Google.com, you will find patents such as one with patent number 5072695 and 5199381. Jot down these patent numbers for used at http://www.pat2pdf.org.
Go to http://www.pat2pdf.org and fill in the patent number 5072695. The system will create a link to a PDF file. Download this file onto your PC.
Open the full patent file pat5072695.pdf with Acrobat Reader.
