On Friday, we announced a significant improvement to the 'user-friendliness' of the ordering process. Now, you can copy your USPTO search results and paste them directly into the Report order form. No matter the search, just copy everything from the results listing and paste it into the order form. The script will extract the numbers for every utility, design, and reissue patent - as well published applications - in the listing, and give you a link that lets you immediately download your Report.

You can read more about this great new feature in this Fizzure post. And this screencast will help you appreciate the simplicity of it.

This new feature, we think, will give you a whole new way to work with USPTO search results.

Wondering how folks are using our FirstPage Reports? Read this post. Ready to order your own, or perhaps try the free 5 document version?

Responsible activism would probably be welcome. No one disputes that the Office has serious backlog and quality issues that must be addressed. The patent community - all sides of it - would no doubt welcome carefully planned and fully contemplated changes to the administrative process that are designed to increase efficiency and quality. Indeed, this is the pipe dream many stakeholders bought into years ago when lending support to a significant fee increase.

But, unfortunately, the Office has seemingly decided that its role in our patent system is much greater than it actually is. Placing limits on an applicant's ability to protect his or her fully disclosed invention is the province of Congress and the democratic process, not that of the regulators and notice and comment rulemaking. This is especially true when the explanation offered by the Office for the need for the rules is the fabled 'continuation abuse' and not the old-reliable problem of the application backlog.

Making matters worse, the attitude of the Office during this nearly two year affair has been nothing short of brash and arrogant. From the early "you'll have to sue us" comments regarding the Office's authority to limit continuation filings to the final decision that dropped the biggest patent prosecution deadline since the GATT date squarely on Halloween - a holiday celebrated immediately after 'normal' business hours, not in the morning - the Office has repeatedly shown a new air of arrogance to the patent community. The end result will likely be - and probably already is - an evaporation of the sense of partnership that seemed to exist just a few years ago. Pity.

The new attitude shows itself even today - at the time of writing this post - nearly two and a half hours after the first blog post on the issuance of the injunction, the Office still has not put any information regarding the injunction on its website. Surely the administration knew an injunction was a possibility (unless the arrogance runs so deep that they couldn't fathom the possibility of a loss). Surely they knew that a surge of deadline-inspired filings was coming (and already in process). Surely they appreciated the fact that every minute, on this day, was critical. Surely they didn't mean to shirk their administrative responsibility to disseminate information relating to the patent prosecution process. Surely they weren't going for political effect when they chose to talk to the Wall Street Journal before talking to their own customers.

The injunction is nothing short of a watershed moment that will - in time - tell us if this new animal lives or dies. Patent reform appears to now be focused on the question 'what is the proper role of the Office in our patent system?'

KUDOS to PLI's live blogging of this important event.

"An application for patent for an invention disclosed in the manner provided by the first paragraph of section 112 of this title in an application previously filed in the United States, or as provided by section 363 of this title, which is filed by an inventor or inventors named in the previously filed application shall have the same effect, as to such invention, as though filed on the date of the prior application, if filed before the patenting or abandonment of or termination of proceedings on the first application or on an application similarly entitled to the benefit of the filing date of the first application and if it contains or is amended to contain a specific reference to the earlier filed application. No application shall be entitled to the benefit of an earlier filed application under this section unless an amendment containing the specific reference to the earlier filed application is submitted at such time during the pendency of the application as required by the Director. The Director may consider the failure to submit such an amendment within that time period as a waiver of any benefit under this section. The Director may establish procedures, including the payment of a surcharge, to accept an unintentionally delayed submission of an amendment under this section."

"Will I, 30 years from now, pay $10 less for an iPod and have a 10 percent less chance that Alzheimer's medicine will be available?" (source)

"You have a group of companies that are happy with the status quo, and are saying, 'Don't change it; it's not broken,'" [Bruce Sewel, Intel executive Vice President and General Counsel] said. "That's fine, but it's broken for a lot of other people." (emphasis added)

1. To encourage disclosure of inventions, and

2. To encourage development of new ideas by fostering design around efforts

Seems to me our great, world-leading patent system is now failing to achieve these purposes in at least two regards...with a third complication on the horizon:

1. - The Old. The "bury your head in the sand and don't read patents" effect of our duty to disclose provisions is legendary around the globe, basically encouraging our best and brightest to avoid reading patents (and other technical references) in fear of having knowledge that they later forget to disclose in an application that might bear only a marginal relationship to the subject matter of the ignored patents. Combine this with the guarantee of an inequitable conduct charge - well-founded or not - should the resulting patent ever be litigated, and you can understand why some technical folks shudder at the sight of patents. Poof! So much for sparking new ideas.

2. - The Now. That which is disclosed in a patent application and not claimed is, of course, dedicated to the public. Our shiny new Patent Office rules now place arbitrary limits on the number of claims that can be obtained for a disclosed invention, which has our brightest inventors telling their patent attorneys "naw...let's not disclose that embodiment right now...I'm afraid I won't be able to claim it. " After carefully considering the best mode requirement, many inventors are, I suspect, sending many wonderful alternative embodiments straight to the cutting room floor. So much for encouraging disclosure.

3. - The Future. Combine #2 with an elimination of the best mode requirement - which has been the subject of patent reform bills for the last several years - and you'll get a glimpse of our system of the future. Rubber stamped, narrow protection that fails to encourage much of anything. Ouch.

How's that for promoting progress?

You'll notice right away that the site has been completely redesigned. It's a bit easier on the eyes, you might say. The FizzDisplay pages present the abstract, claims, and bibliographic information in an attractive, easy to read format that loads quickly. The FizzDisplay is sweet, instant gratification.

The improvements are not just cosmetic, though. Nope....PatentFizz has an impressive slate of all new features designed to more effectively deliver patent-based information. I'll be detailing these features on Fizzure, the PatentFizz blog, over the coming weeks, so be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed.

I'll let one new feature out of the bag now....you can download patent pdf's right from the new FizzDisplay page for a particular patent. Just look for the "PDF" box in the upper right portion of the FizzDisplay page for your patent and click the "Go" button. A new page will load that presents an ad while the .pdf is assembled. Once ready, a link for the .pdf will appear...just right or control click it and save the file to your machine. Presto!

As always, please let me know if you have any comments, questions or suggestions.