American Library Association, 2008, -153 pp.
In 1983 I was hired as engineering librarian at Arizona State University. For ten years prior to that I had worked at Caegie Mellon University as an engineering librarian and also in private business and industry, so I had a background in chemistry and engineering. At Arizona State I was informed that one of the duties of the engineering librarian was to head the Patent and Trademark Depository Library there—a complete collection of U.S. patents that was made available to the university community and to the public. I knew next to nothing about patents and had to lea fast.
Most of the users of the patent collection were citizens of Arizona who walked into the library with bright eyes and high expectations of riches from patenting an idea they had. My toughest challenge was instructing these people in how to search existing patents, which at the time was a labor-intensive manual process. Most did not have an education beyond high school, and they sought me out because I was the only knowledgeable patent expert they could talk to for free between Dallas and Los Angeles.
To assist people who wanted to do their own patent search, I made handouts on topics such as using the patent index and identifying the field of search. Several years later I had an equivalent position as business and engineering librarian at the Phoenix Public Library and added to my growing collection of patent guides. By the time I arrived at Penn State University in 1990 to become director of the Robert E. Eiche Library, I had more than 200 pages of instructional material. This material formed the basis of my first book, Patent Searching for Librarians and Inventors, which was published in 1995 by ALA Editions. Reviews of the book were favorable, and although this first book is now out of print, one large legal firm has labeled it a standard text in introductory patent information. This encouraged me to go further with the topic of intellectual property and to cover copyright and trademarks in my subsequent books, using the same instructional concepts I had first used at Arizona State.
This is my fourth book on intellectual property. The field has changed greatly since 1983, in that the laborious manual searching process for both patents and trademarks has been automated and made available to anyone via the Inteet. This in tu has changed the way in which intellectual property is taught and has brought its own challenges. Where once a librarian could say to an amateur patent user, Go to this call number and get the Index to the U.S. Patent Classification, the instruction for locating the same item on the Web is a process of almost ten steps. That is the trade-off. The process is much easier on the Web, but instructing a person how to use the Inteet sites related to intellectual property is tedious to explain. I hope this book will help with that.
I am sincerely thankful to my staff assistant, Mary Hooper, who as always has worked with me to complete this project. Without her assistance in my publication projects I could never finish them. My thanks also to Yehuda Berlinger for his work in writing the intellectual property codes in verse, which appear in appendix A. These poems, which may seem on the surface to be merely whimsical exercises, actually have much practical value. I am also grateful to the University Libraries at Penn State University for their support of my publication activity.
Patents, Copyright, and Trademarks
Patents
Searching Patents
Copyright
Trademarks
Trademarks
Appendixes
A Intellectual Property Codes in Verse
B Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries
In 1983 I was hired as engineering librarian at Arizona State University. For ten years prior to that I had worked at Caegie Mellon University as an engineering librarian and also in private business and industry, so I had a background in chemistry and engineering. At Arizona State I was informed that one of the duties of the engineering librarian was to head the Patent and Trademark Depository Library there—a complete collection of U.S. patents that was made available to the university community and to the public. I knew next to nothing about patents and had to lea fast.
Most of the users of the patent collection were citizens of Arizona who walked into the library with bright eyes and high expectations of riches from patenting an idea they had. My toughest challenge was instructing these people in how to search existing patents, which at the time was a labor-intensive manual process. Most did not have an education beyond high school, and they sought me out because I was the only knowledgeable patent expert they could talk to for free between Dallas and Los Angeles.
To assist people who wanted to do their own patent search, I made handouts on topics such as using the patent index and identifying the field of search. Several years later I had an equivalent position as business and engineering librarian at the Phoenix Public Library and added to my growing collection of patent guides. By the time I arrived at Penn State University in 1990 to become director of the Robert E. Eiche Library, I had more than 200 pages of instructional material. This material formed the basis of my first book, Patent Searching for Librarians and Inventors, which was published in 1995 by ALA Editions. Reviews of the book were favorable, and although this first book is now out of print, one large legal firm has labeled it a standard text in introductory patent information. This encouraged me to go further with the topic of intellectual property and to cover copyright and trademarks in my subsequent books, using the same instructional concepts I had first used at Arizona State.
This is my fourth book on intellectual property. The field has changed greatly since 1983, in that the laborious manual searching process for both patents and trademarks has been automated and made available to anyone via the Inteet. This in tu has changed the way in which intellectual property is taught and has brought its own challenges. Where once a librarian could say to an amateur patent user, Go to this call number and get the Index to the U.S. Patent Classification, the instruction for locating the same item on the Web is a process of almost ten steps. That is the trade-off. The process is much easier on the Web, but instructing a person how to use the Inteet sites related to intellectual property is tedious to explain. I hope this book will help with that.
I am sincerely thankful to my staff assistant, Mary Hooper, who as always has worked with me to complete this project. Without her assistance in my publication projects I could never finish them. My thanks also to Yehuda Berlinger for his work in writing the intellectual property codes in verse, which appear in appendix A. These poems, which may seem on the surface to be merely whimsical exercises, actually have much practical value. I am also grateful to the University Libraries at Penn State University for their support of my publication activity.
Patents, Copyright, and Trademarks
Patents
Searching Patents
Copyright
Trademarks
Trademarks
Appendixes
A Intellectual Property Codes in Verse
B Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries