Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Patent Grabber: Change at USPTO also effects published applications

Sorry, but contrary to yesterday's post, US patent applications are also adversely effected by the USPTO's switch to PDF downloads. Patent Grabber only appears to be downloading the application pages. However, the pages are blank!

I will be releasing a fix for both US patents and published applications as soon as I can. In the meantime, you may still download US patents and published applications using Patent Grabber's "International" option. Using that option downloads the pages from the EPO's library. Just be sure to precede each patent and publication number with the "US" country code.

Monday, August 26, 2013

USPTO goes to PDF downloads. Patent Grabber needs modification.

USPTO has gone to PDF downloads after years of saying that it was too onerous and expensive to do so. As a result, Patent Grabber will hang if you try to download US patents. You can use the "International" downloading option for US patents as a stopgap measure (remember to add the "US" country code).

Even though US published patent applications are also now available in PDF format from the USPTO, Patent Grabber does is not having a problem with them. Go figure!