Blazing Dawn Blog

Patent Grabber's PCT searching is broken - fix is coming!

2011-11-21T21:35:00.002-05:00

Recent changes by WIPO to their PatentScope search system have broken Patent Grabber's PCT search function. The ability to download PCT published patent applications is not affected by this issue.

I have already identified a fix and will release Patent Grabber 5.9.2 very shortly.

Patent Grabber 5.9.1 has been released

2011-08-20T17:58:00.003-04:00

I have released Patent Grabber 5.9.1. This update addresses an issue that was occurring during the downloading of the text of a PCT application. Patent Grabber could crash if the claims section of the application was particularly large (>300 KB). That has been fixed.

Download this new version for Mac or Windows.

Family-izer(TM) Solo: New, free source of INPADOC patent family info

2011-07-29T17:22:00.003-04:00

I just completed a new, free web application for patent family information. It is called Family-izer(TM) Solo. My original Family-izer gave only the country code, publication number and kind code. The Solo version gives you a table with additional information like the full country name, publication date, application number, and a description of the kind code.

Also unlike the original Family-izer, the Solo version does not require a browser plugin. You can use it from any modern web browser, regardless of the underlying device. It should work on any computer, tablet device or smart phone. So if you find yourself without a computer and need patent family info, just pull out your smart phone, open its web browser and head to the Family-izer Solo page!

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.9 is now available

2011-07-17T14:26:00.012-04:00

Patent Grabber 5.9 can now be downloaded directly from the Patent Tools page of the Blazing Dawn Software web site. At the request of a UK venture capital company, this new version allows users to create an enhanced spreadsheet of bibliographic information for U.S. patents. In addition to the information on the face of the patent, the "US Patent Biblio +" function additionally contains for each patent in your list:

1) the corresponding foreign patents from INPADOC,

2) the legal status of the patent from INPADOC,

3) full description of the main class of the patent,

4) the assignees of the cited patents,

5) the count of cited patents,

6) a list of later-issued patents that cite the patent ("forward citations"),

7) the count of forward citations (in case you are interested in that statistic) and

8) the assignees of the forward citations

This function is free to use for lists of up to 20 patents. Usage with lists of >20 patents requires a Patent Grabber license (which is quite inexpensive at $30).

Version 5.9 additionally fixes EPO and PCT searching that had been broken by changes in the EPO and WIPO search systems. EPO searching is no longer limited to the first 30 hits.

Patent Grabber 5.9 now available to current users

2011-07-08T19:32:00.000-04:00

Patent Grabber 5.9 is now available to current users. Not downloadable from the web site yet. Users should click the "Check for updates" button on their current version.

New spreadsheet function with some awesome features that were requested by a UK venture capital company.
Fixed EP-A and PCT searching.

Patent Grabber PCT text and searching problems

2011-07-02T10:44:00.003-04:00

WIPO has extensively changed its search interface. That as broken Patent Grabber's ability to download the text of PCT applications and to search for PCT applications. Patent Grabber's ability to download PCT applications in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format is NOT effected.

A fix for this problem is nearly complete.

Family-izer: problem with Firefox 4 under Windows

2011-06-08T21:09:00.006-04:00

There is apparently an incompatibility under Windows(R) between Firefox 4 and the free plugin that runs Family-izer(TM) (www.familyizer.com). This is beyond my control, since I am not the developer of the plugin. Hopefully, the plugin developer will work with the Mozilla folks to get this ironed out soon. In the meantime, Firefox 3.x still works fine.

Under Mac OS X, Firefox 4 has to be run under 32-bit mode but it works! However, there is absolutely no problem using Safari.

Patent Grabber: European application searching not working

2011-06-08T21:00:00.006-04:00

I just discovered that EP application searching has stopped working in Patent Grabber(TM). I guess there are not many users of that feature, since I have not received any complaints.

The problem was caused by the EPO's recent changes to the format of their search results pages. I have made the needed adjustments, so EP application searching will be working again in Ver. 5.9. In fact, the searching will be improved since I have overcome the 30-hit limit on viewing EP application search results! Users will now be able to view search results up to the EPO's limit of 500 hits.

Stay tuned for my announcement of the release of Patent Grabber 5.9!

Patent Grabber 5.8.6 is now available

2011-04-23T18:46:00.002-04:00

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.8.6 is now available for download from the Patent Tools page of the Blazing Dawn Software web site. It now has a fresh, modern new look and a filtering field to make it easy to find a patent in a long list of downloaded patents.

Printing problems with Patent Grabber on Mac?

2011-04-15T19:12:00.002-04:00

If any Mac users are having problems using Patent Grabber's printing feature, or if you have recently used Patent Grabber's printing feature successfully, please leave a comment. In your comment, let me know which version of Mac OS X you are using: Tiger, Leopard or Snow Leopard. Thanks!

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.8.5 is now available

2011-02-05T16:52:00.003-05:00

Patent Grabber 5.8.5 for Mac OS X and Windows is now available. This release reestablishes the downloading of granted European patents (EP-B) that was broken when the EPO changed the URL of the European Publication Server. In the Search function, it also fixes an issue with bibliographic information for U.S. design patents.

Download a copy from Blazing Dawn Software's Patent Tools page.

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.8.4 is now available

2010-12-19T20:33:00.003-05:00

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.8.4 for Mac OS X and Windows is now available. This release fixes a bug in the Sortable List function for U.S. patent search results. This is a free upgrade for licensed users. Just go to the Patent Tools page of the Blazing Dawn Software web site.

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.8.3 is now available

2010-12-05T22:13:00.002-05:00

Patent Grabber 5.8.3 is now available for download from the Patent Tools page of the Blazing Dawn Software web site. This release adds further details to Patent Grabber's international patent status report that will help users understand the legal status of the patent in many European countries. Also, search results that are displayed in Patent Family format now have a description of each family member's Kind Code.

FAMILY-IZER now has its own web site!

2010-11-28T00:09:00.003-05:00

Blazing Dawn's FAMILY-IZER patent family retrieval tool now has its own web site! Just go to www.familyizer.com to use it.

FAMILY-IZER is great for analyzing the patent portfolio of a company since it does not simply keep repeating the same family info over and over again for patents that are members of a single family. Instead, it provides the entire family once, and then refers back to that family for each subsequent patent that is a member.

ChecksQuick(TM) 3.2.1 for Windows is now available

2010-09-29T17:43:00.004-04:00

ChecksQuick 3.2.1 fixes a bug that effects Windows users, only, especially Windows 7 users. This is a free upgrade for licensed users.

Mac OS X users can continue to use Version 3.2.

Download links for Mac OS X and Windows are on the Blazing Dawn "Household" page.

Patent Grabber 5.8.2 is now available

2010-09-12T14:00:00.002-04:00

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.8.2 is now available for download. This update adjusts for a change made by the European Patent Office that prevented the downloading of EP, PCT and International patents. This is a free upgrade for licensed users.

Go to the Blazing Dawn Software Patent Tools page to download.

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.8.1 is now available

2010-09-05T16:51:00.006-04:00

Patent Grabber 5.8.1 is now available for download. Several minor issues were addressed in this update. It is a free upgrade for licensed users:

Windows version should now retain "licensed" state for all users under Windows 7.
Brought back case insensitivity for U.S. patent numbers that start with letters, such as reissue patents.
The "Check for Updates" button will now work from behind a proxy server if one is entered into Preferences.

Download a copy now?

ChecksQuick(TM) 3.2 is now available

2010-09-04T13:20:00.006-04:00

ChecksQuick 3.2 is now available for download. Here is what's new:

- Check amounts of up to 99,999.99 can now be used.

- A new dropdown button on each Payment Card allows users to quickly jump to a specific card.

New Check Layout Option:

- Landscape feeding of checks is now supported on left and right-feeding printers through the addition of a y-Offset adjustment. Previously, landscape feeding was only supported on center-feeding printers.

This is a free upgrade for licensed users. For licensed Mac users, ChecksQuick 3.2 should automatically open in its licensed state.

Licensed Windows users will likely have to enter their username and license codes, since the location of Preferences had to be changed to allow for compatibility with Windows 7. To use your old Layout files, you will need to move them from the root directory where they currently reside to a special folder that depends on which version of Windows you are using. Contact the author for assistence, if needed.

Second beta of ChecksQuick 3.2

2010-08-13T16:24:00.004-04:00

A second beta of ChecksQuick 3.2 is now available for download. In addition to supporting non-center-feeding printers to feed checks in landscape orientation, beta 2 adds support for checks of greater than $9999.99. Not that I routinely write checks for more than that, but at least one ChecksQuick user had requested that feature. So here it is!

You can download beta 2 from the following links:

Mac OS X (From Tiger to Snow Leopard)

Windows (From 2000 to 7)

Please let me have your comments and/or suggestions.

ChecksQuick 3.2 beta now available

2010-08-08T12:28:00.003-04:00

I finally started upgrading ChecksQuick(TM). A beta of Version 3.2 is now available. For all users, this version adds a y-Offset (in addition to the present x-Offset) so that checks can be fed in landscape orientation (shorter-side first) into printers that feed from the right or left side. Previously, landscape orientation was only supported on center-feeding printers.

This version also moves the preferences and check layout files for Windows users to avoid any incompatibility with Windows 7.

Download the beta from one of the following links:

ChecksQuick 3.2 beta for Mac OS X

ChecksQuick 3.2 beta for Windows

Released Patent Grabber 5.8!

2010-07-03T12:21:00.001-04:00

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.8 is now available. This version adds full-text searching of EP-A applications (limited to 30 hits). It more importantly fixes the downloading issues with EP, PCT and International patent documents that had been caused by changes at the European Patent Office.

Downloading EP-A, PCT and pre-2002 EP-B temporarily broken

2010-06-15T22:56:00.002-04:00

Those mischievous folks at the EPO have done it again! Minor changes to their coding has broken Patent Grabber's ability to download EP-A and PCT applications, as well as pre-2002 EP-B patents. The fix is trivial but tedious. A new version will be available shortly.

EPO servers appear to be back to normal!

2010-05-13T20:06:00.001-04:00

The EPO's servers that Patent Grabber relies upon appear to be working normally again. Hopefully they will stay that way!

EPO confirms that Open Patent Services is experiencing problems

2010-05-11T21:46:00.003-04:00

The European Patent Office has confirmed that their Open Patent Services (OPS) server is experiencing problems.

For Patent Grabber(TM) users, this will likely cause problems with downloading EP published applications, EP granted patents earlier than 1999, and INPADOC legal status summaries. It will also cause problems for the "Include family identifiers" option of the U.S. Patent Biblio spreadsheet. For reviewing search results, there will be problems with using the "Biblio" and "Family" radio buttons that are next to the search results field.

We will let you know when the issue has been resolved.

EPO's Open Patent Services experiencing problems?

2010-05-10T22:41:00.003-04:00

Seems the last few days that service from the EPO's "Open Patent Services" server has been very spotty. This affects the downloading of EP-A images and pre-2001 EP-B images as well as INPADOC legal status summaries. In the search function, this also will affect the viewing of bibliographic and patent family information for both U.S. and PCT search results.

This is not a Patent Grabber issue, and hopefully the problem will be cleared up soon.

Update on Patent Grabber EP-A search feature

2010-05-08T19:54:00.001-04:00

Proof of concept for EP-A searching has been accomplished. Now comes the hard part, integrating it smoothly into the other pieces of the Patent Grabber search system.

Working on full text EP-A searching for Patent Grabber

2010-05-04T22:34:00.002-04:00

The next new feature for Patent Grabber(TM) that I am working on is full text searching of published applications from the European Patent Office; the so-called "EP-A" publications. This is a feature that was requested by several users, and I am hopeful that I will be able to add it soon.

Patent Grabber 5.7.4 is now available

2010-05-04T21:57:00.005-04:00

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.7.4 fixes a bug that prevented certain INPADOC legal status summaries from successfully downloading. The problem only occurred when a patent or application was published more than once with different "Kind Codes" using the same publication number.

Download Patent Grabber 5.7.4 for Mac OSX

Download Patent Grabber 5.7.4 for Windows

Revised build of Patent Grabber 5.7.3

2010-04-02T12:45:00.002-04:00

If the title bar of your Patent Grabber 5.7.3 shows "-09" then please download again. Build 09 did not update on small function (patent family identifiers for the US Biblio feature). That was corrected in Build 10. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Mac OSX

Windows

Family-izer 2.5 adds two columns of statistical info

2010-03-28T09:44:00.004-04:00

Version 2.5 of Family-izer™ adds two columns of statistical information. The first column shows the total number of family members (sure beats counting them by hand!). For the "International" option, the second column shows the number of unique countries and/or regions that are in the family. This gives a rough sense of the scope of foreign filing for a patent. For the "US only" option, the second column will always be blank.

Try Family-izer today!

Patent Grabber 5.7.3 is now available

2010-03-27T17:06:00.002-04:00

We have just released Patent Grabber(TM) 5.7.3. This is another maintenance release to respond to changes made by the European Patent Office to their Open Patent Services server.

All users must upgrade if they wish to maintain the ability to download EP, PCT and International patents as well as INPADOC legal status information after the EPO's cut off date of March 31.

Patent Grabber 5.7.2 is now available

2010-02-12T18:01:00.002-05:00

Patent Grabber 5.7.2 should be downloaded by all Ver. 5.x licensed users. Changes made by the European Patent Office to its Open Patent Services server destroyed Patent Grabber's ability to download any EP, PCT, International or INPADOC documents. This is now fixed.

Those same changes also broke Family-izer. A new version (2.4.2) has now been posted to the web site. Do a force reload of the Family-izer page if you do not see Ver. 2.4.2.

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.7.1 now available

2010-01-09T13:28:00.003-05:00

Free update for licensed users.

Patent Grabber(TM) 5.7.1 is now available. This is a minor update to conform Patent Grabber to changes that were made on the USPTO server. Due to these changes on the USPTO server, patents or applications that did not contain drawings would download in their entirety even when the user had only selected specific sections to download. This is now fixed.

Patent Grabber 5.7 is now available

2009-12-26T17:30:00.003-05:00

Patent Grabber 5.7 is now available for download from the Blazing Dawn Software web site. As mentioned in my previous posting, this version adds the option of including patent family identifiers in a spreadsheet of bibliographic information for U.S. patents. This is a great convenience when you are reviewing a large portfolio of patents from a single company, as it allows the spreadsheet to be sorted by patent family.

This is a free upgrade for licensed users of Patent Grabber 5.x.

Patent family identifiers being added to US Patent Bibliographic Information in Patent Grabber

2009-12-07T20:45:00.005-05:00

I once had to analyze the patent portfolio of a company. They had 179 U.S. patents. So I used Patent Grabber's "US Patent Biblio" feature to start with. That gave me a spreadsheet with the bibliographic information for all 179 patents in a couple of minutes.

But with that many patents, I thought it would be useful to be able to group them into their families. That is why I developed Family-izer(TM). Once I had the family information, I gave each family an arbitrary number and entered those numbers in a new column of the spreadsheet. It took a couple of hours, but when I was done I could sort the spreadsheet by family as well as by any of the other columns.

So now I had a brainstorm. Why spend a couple of hours entering patent family identifiers, when I could add Family-izer functionality to the US Patent Biblio feature! I should be able to automatically get a spreadsheet that already had each patent family assigned an identifying number. No more manual labor!

I have gotten it working. Now I need just a little more testing. Look for Patent Grabber 5.7 in the near future!

Family-izer now works with international patents!

2009-12-07T20:32:00.004-05:00

Starting with Family-izer(TM) 2.4, users are no longer restricted to entering only U.S. patents and published applications in the Family-izer search field! With the simple inclusion of a two-letter country code, users can now start with a patent or publication number from many different countries.

Go to http://www.blazingdawn.com/demo/family-izer.html and try it out. It's free!

Patent Grabber 5.6.2 now available!

2009-11-27T18:53:00.006-05:00

Patent Grabber 5.6.2 is now available. This is a minor update that eliminates the downloading of duplicate pages in some international patents. On the Search screen, it also eliminates run-on words in the text of PCT publications.

Many thanks to Patent Grabber users David and Bob for alerting me to the duplicate page bug!

Production version of Family-izer now available

2009-11-14T16:02:00.007-05:00

Blazing Dawn Software's free patent family aggregator, Family-izer, is now out of alpha and in full production. Just click the link on the Blazing Dawn home page.

Family-izer takes a list of U.S. patents and published applications and retrieves the INPADOC patent family for each one. Great if you are looking to organize the patent portfolio of a single company.

All you need to do is download the free revWeb browser plugin from Runtime Revolution, and Family-izer will be at your fingertips any time you need it.

ChecksQuick printing under Snow Leopard??

2009-11-14T09:25:00.003-05:00

I received one report from a ChecksQuick user that he was unable to print his checks under Snow Leopard. That turned out to be a false alarm. The user needed to update his printer driver. Once he did that ChecksQuick printed fine under Snow Leopard.

During the time he could not print under Snow Leopard, that user got around the problem by downloading the Windows version and running ChecksQuick under Windows 7 via VMWare Fusion. So ChecksQuick runs fine under Windows 7, too!

Windows helper C42pdf and Windows 7 (further update)

2009-08-29T17:05:00.002-04:00

I am happy to report that the user who had problems with the C42PDF helper application under Windows 7 (64 bit) when using Patent Grabber 5.5 did not experience the problem under Patent Grabber 5.6! So users should be able to download US patents and applications under Windows 7 using Patent Grabber 5.6.

Patent Grabber 5.6 is now available

2009-08-02T18:25:00.002-04:00

Patent Grabber 5.6 is now available for download from the Blazing Dawn web site. This version adds the ability to create a spreadsheet of bibliographic information from a list of U.S. patents. A couple of users had requested this feature, and it is now a reality.

Please let me know what you think of this new functionality.

Windows helper C42pdf and Windows 7

2009-07-11T19:58:00.003-04:00

A Windows user of Patent Grabber was trying out Patent Grabber under Windows 7 and found that the C42pdf helper application was not converting USPTO TIFF page images into PDF format. He had no problem with PCT publications in which the pages are already in PDF format, so the PDFTK helper application is properly combining the individual PDF pages into a single PDF file under Windows 7.

Has anyone else experienced problems under Windows 7? Has anyone used Windows 7 to download US patents without a problem? Please let me know. Thanks.

Update: The issue might only effect the 64-bit version of Windows 7.

INPADOC reports using Japanese document numbers

2009-05-16T13:38:00.004-04:00

I just discovered that downloading an INPADOC Legal Status report using Patent Grabber requires that the Japanese document number be the publication number of the "laid open" patent application. Using the granted patent number will likely turn up the wrong invention since the Japanese Patent Office can use the same number for totally different inventions.

If you find that doing an INPADOC query using a Japanese number results in a report for a totally unrelated invention, then it is likely that the number you are using is a granted patent number. If you search at Espacenet using that number, you will get several hits. One of them will be the invention that you are looking for, and you can get the Japanese laid open publication number from that hit.

Bibliographic spreadsheet feature?

2009-04-01T22:47:00.003-04:00

A couple of users have asked me to add the ability to download just bibliographic information for a list of patents to Patent Grabber. The information would be put into a file that could be opened as a spreadsheet. I have started doing so. For U.S. patents, the information would be:

patent number

issue date

title

abstract

inventors

assignee

application number

filing date

foreign priority

U.S. class

international class

field of search

cited U.S. patents

What other information would you like to see? Please let me know.

Lost your registration info? Please ask!

2009-03-28T16:36:00.000-04:00

A Patent Grabber user in Israel must have lost his registration info. So when his copy of Patent Grabber reverted to "trial" status (maybe he moved it to a new computer), he purchased an upgrade again! What he should have done was send me an e-mail asking for his registration info. I have records of all registered users, so I do not have any problem with sending someone their registration info.

Long print time for downloaded patents?

2009-03-28T16:31:00.000-04:00

I was recently contacted by a Patent Grabber user from Maryland who said that he was having problems printing downloaded patents. His specific problem was that each page was taking 30 seconds to print on his "fast printer." He was using Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Standard to print the patents. I asked him to send me a copy of a problem patent. While I am waiting for his response, I would like to know if anyone else has ever experienced this problem. Please let me know.

Blazing Dawn's new communication tool

2009-03-28T16:16:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the Blazing Dawn Software blog! We will use this blog as our communications tool to alert you to issues, give you tips, and generally let you know what is going on with our software. So check back here every once in a while so that you can keep up to date.