Production version of Family-izer now available

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??

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)

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

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

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

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?

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.