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R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
Ian Bell wrote...

I prefer these guys,
http://free.patentfetcher.com/Patent-Fetcher-Form.php

So far I've accumulated about 1000 patents that interest
me, taking 866MB of disk space. I'm sorry to say that
I paid $3 apiece for many of them in the bad old days...

I don't get this - the USPTO has had them online for free
ever since I can remember the USPTO being on-line. The
only glitch is that their images are .TIFF format, so
you used to have to download a reader, but nowadays
even that probably isn't necessary.

http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

Cheers!
Rich
 
W

Winfield Hill

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich Grise wrote...
I don't get this - the USPTO has had them online for free
ever since I can remember the USPTO being on-line. The
only glitch is that their images are .TIFF format, so
you used to have to download a reader, but nowadays
even that probably isn't necessary.

http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

The benefit of a pdf file is it's just one file, instead
of one file per page. What a pain!!
 
S

Spehro Pefhany

Jan 1, 1970
0
I don't get this - the USPTO has had them online for free
ever since I can remember the USPTO being on-line. The
only glitch is that their images are .TIFF format, so
you used to have to download a reader, but nowadays
even that probably isn't necessary.

http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

Cheers!
Rich

Page-by-page images. Yuk. It was worth $3 or $5 each to get them into
a more useful form, though why the USPTO chose TIFFs rather than just
putting them online in PDF format is hard to figure.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
Page-by-page images. Yuk. It was worth $3 or $5 each to get them into
a more useful form, though why the USPTO chose TIFFs rather than just
putting them online in PDF format is hard to figure.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

For those patents/applications available only on USPTO, I use
"TiffCombine" to create a single file, then convert to PDF.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | |
| E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat |
| http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.
 
I

Ian Bell

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich said:
I don't get this - the USPTO has had them online for free
ever since I can remember the USPTO being on-line. The
only glitch is that their images are .TIFF format, so
you used to have to download a reader, but nowadays
even that probably isn't necessary.

http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

Yes, but they only cover US patents.

Ian
 
R

Rich Grise

Jan 1, 1970
0
Page-by-page images. Yuk. It was worth $3 or $5 each to get them into
a more useful form, though why the USPTO chose TIFFs rather than just
putting them online in PDF format is hard to figure.

Well, I don't remember how I did it, but I have a few patents here in a
file folder - that's paper, in a Pendaflex - and IIRC they were trivially
easy to print.

But, as has been said, the USPTO only has US patents. )-;

Thnaks!
Rich
 
W

Winfield Hill

Jan 1, 1970
0
Rich Grise wrote...
Well, I don't remember how I did it, but I have a few patents here
in a file folder - that's paper, in a Pendaflex - and IIRC they were
trivially easy to print.

You hit PRINT multiple times as you displayed pages one at a time?

Now imagine saving each to a different file, then manually combining
them into one file somehow... Printing is easy by comparison.
 
Page-by-page images. Yuk. It was worth $3 or $5 each to get them into
a more useful form, though why the USPTO chose TIFFs rather than just
putting them online in PDF format is hard to figure.


The Europeans made 'em do it. Really. The PCT (Patent Cooperation
Treaty) specifies the (unusual) storage format, which is .TIFF with
CCITT Group 4 compression.

http://www.uspto.gov/patft/help/images.htm

You'd think they could offer '.PDF' conversion, but I suppose their
servers are already severely taxed as it is...

Cheers,
James Arthur
 
R

Robert Latest

Jan 1, 1970
0
You hit PRINT multiple times as you displayed pages one at a time?

Now imagine saving each to a different file, then manually combining
them into one file somehow... Printing is easy by comparison.

Easily batchable with wget (to fetch the subsequent TIFFs),
tiffcp (to make one multi-page TIFF out of the single images) and
finally tiff2pdf to create the pdf wrapper.

robert
 
T

Tony Williams

Jan 1, 1970
0
The Europeans made 'em do it. Really. The PCT (Patent
Cooperation Treaty) specifies the (unusual) storage format, which
is .TIFF with CCITT Group 4 compression.

I was supplied with a collection of electronic circuit
diagrams the other day. The originals in their CAD
were in PDF form, but they converted them to multipage
TIFFs for supply to outsiders. They explained that the
reason was legal, in that it is apparently difficult to
modify a TIFF without leaving footprints.

Detemining whether documents have been copied or modified
could be important in court cases..... theft of IP, or
assigning blame in the event of an accident, or whatever.

PDF's can now be locked for similar reasons.
 
Tony said:
I was supplied with a collection of electronic circuit
diagrams the other day. The originals in their CAD
were in PDF form, but they converted them to multipage
TIFFs for supply to outsiders. They explained that the
reason was legal, in that it is apparently difficult to
modify a TIFF without leaving footprints.

Detemining whether documents have been copied or modified
could be important in court cases..... theft of IP, or
assigning blame in the event of an accident, or whatever.

PDF's can now be locked for similar reasons.

Sounds sensible enough. Investigated, there usually are rational
explanations for these requirements.

Thanks.
James Arthur
 
F

Fred Abse

Jan 1, 1970
0
Easily batchable with wget (to fetch the subsequent TIFFs),
tiffcp (to make one multi-page TIFF out of the single images) and
finally tiff2pdf to create the pdf wrapper.

The pat2pdf script (don't confuse it with the online version, pat2pdf.org)
automates that all nicely. It uses either wget or lynx (whichever you
like) to get the tiffs, then tiff2ps on each, then gs to assemble a
multi-page pdf. Just one command line action - "pat2pdf <pat #>".

http://www.tothink.com/pat2pdf/

Obviously, you need to have either wget or lynx, plus tiff2ps, plus gs
already, for it to work. It's just a shell script.
 
J

Jim Thompson

Jan 1, 1970
0
The pat2pdf script (don't confuse it with the online version, pat2pdf.org)
automates that all nicely. It uses either wget or lynx (whichever you
like) to get the tiffs, then tiff2ps on each, then gs to assemble a
multi-page pdf. Just one command line action - "pat2pdf <pat #>".

http://www.tothink.com/pat2pdf/

Obviously, you need to have either wget or lynx, plus tiff2ps, plus gs
already, for it to work. It's just a shell script.

Is there a "wget" that ISN'T command-line?

...Jim Thompson
 
F

Fred Abse

Jan 1, 1970
0
Is there a "wget" that ISN'T command-line?

Wellll....... There *is* a sort of GUI (TCL/TK) frontend (TKwget) that
sort of makes things a bit easier. Thing is, wget was intended to be run
in the background unattended, probably as a cron job, for mirroring sites,
and it has a lot of configurable options. You still need the manual in
front of you using TKwget. The usefulness of wget is largely in its being
able to be piped into other applications, as in pat2pdf.

You can run into real trouble if you give wget the wrong options. Not only
will it build a replica if a site on your machine, it will follow all the
links to other sites, and build those, too. You come in in a morning to
find gigabytes that you didn't want.

Pat2pdf goes to uspto.gov, finds the tiffs, does the conversion, saves the
pdf and quits cold, I'm glad to say.
 
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