The Official Gazette published this week includes maintenance fee related expiration notices for 1333 patents. We have added a comment indicating the expired status to the FizzDisplay for each of these patents.

Since launching our FirstPage Reports, we’ve received a lot of great feedback from our users. Many have shared their favorite uses for the Reports and several have given us some ideas for improvement.

Many people told us that they were generating Reports directly from the results of their searches on the USPTO website for things like monitoring a firm’s patents, a particular technology area or class, and even to keep an eye on the patent activity of the competition. A couple users thankfully fessed up and told us that entering a large number of patents - such as for the 50 and 100 page Reports - was a bit tedious.

That got us thinking - Is there a way to make it easier to generate a FirstPage Report off of USPTO search results?

Turns out there is. We’ve implemented an improvement that now lets you copy and paste your USPTO search results directly into the data entry form when ordering your Report. Now you can just copy everything from the USPTO search results page, paste it into the patent/pub number text box on the Report order form, and click submit. The script will automatically extract the patent document numbers (including utility, design, reissue, and published application numbers) and discard all the extraneous information.

Generating your report is now as easy as copy-and-paste. We’ve even made a screencast of the operation to show you how simple it is (click here to view this 12 min. screencast).

And the best part - this new feature works with any USPTO search results listing. No matter how you search - quick boolean, advanced - or what you search - patents, applications, or a combination of both - all you have to do is copy and paste. And it works for all versions of the Reports, including the free 5 page variety.

We hope you enjoy this new feature. We think it makes the Reports much more user friendly and gives you a whole new way to interact with your USPTO search results.

We just put the finishing touches on an important upgrade to our FirstPage Reports - the Reports can now include design and reissue patents.

So, now our popular FirstPage Reports cover:

• utility patents
• published utility applications
• reissue patents
• design patents

When entering design and reissue numbes in the form, be sure to include the ‘RE’ or ‘D’, as appropriate. Commas are ok, but not required. Here are some examples of form that will work:

• re35100
• RE35,100
• RE35100
• d300100
• D300100
• d300,100

We’ll be posting a screencast soon that highlights the next great feature, so stay tuned.

The Official Gazette published this week includes reinstatement notices for 37 patents that had previously expired due to a failure to pay applicable maintenance fees. We have added a comment indicating the reinstated status to the FizzDisplay for each of these patents.

We were able to calculate the length of the period between expiration and reinstatement for 35 of the 37 reinstated patents. The reinstatement comment for these patents includes this information as well.

The Official Gazette published this week includes maintenance fee related expiration notices for 1329 patents. We have added a comment indicating the expired status to the FizzDisplay for each of these patents.

The feedback on our FirstPage Reports has been amazing. In addition to telling us about how they use the reports, many people have given us some helpful suggestions on how to improve the service.

The most popular suggestion is also the most popular question we received - can FirstPage Reports include published applications as well as issued patents?

Tonight, I’m glad to announce that the answer is ‘yes’. Starting today, you can include patent numbers and publication numbers in the request form when ordering your FirstPage Report (you can do this in the free 5 document report, too). Mix and match patents and published applications however you like. Just make sure that your app publication numbers are 11 digits (e.g., 20070034219) and your patent numbers are 7 digits (e.g., 6288919). You can include commas in your patent numbers (although they are not required), but please do not include a slash in the app publication numbers.

We think this update to the FirstPage Reports makes them even more useful, and we hope you agree. Please continue to send your questions and comments…and we’ll keep making improvements.

Since the unveiling of our FirstPage Reports, tons of people have used the free 5 page report option to kick the tires and give ‘em a try. We’ve talked with several users about the reports and learned a lot about how people want to use them. So far, the most popular uses of the Reports are:

• Law firms - generate and circulate weekly reports that include every patent issued under the firm’s name for the week
• Businesses - monitor the competition…and specific technology areas as part of a competitive intelligence program
• Financial analysts - monitor the patent activity of particular companies

We’ve also listened to a lot of suggestions for improvement. We’re putting the final touches on two major improvements right now, and plan to make two announcements regarding these improvements over the next day or so….stay tuned.

Downloading a .pdf of an issued United States patent from the FizzDisplay page is as easy as pie. And we’re even serving Apple and Cherry varieties.

Watch the first official PatentFizz screencast for a brief (~3 mins) demo.

We’ve just finished adding all maintenance fee expiration notices for 2004, 2005, and 2006.  And we’re still marching backwards….

We pushed through two quick updates to the site last night:

1. On the FizzDisplay page for a particular patent, you can now download a .pdf containing only the cover page of the patent. Just click the ‘Go’ button in the ‘OnePager’ box at the top right of the page. This is perfect for quickly grabbing the bibliographic information for a patent.

You can still download the full .pdf from the FizzDisplay - this new feature just gives you a second option.

Thanks to Steve Nipper for this suggestion.

Shameless plug - if you’re working with a large collection of patents and would like to download a single .pdf containing the first page of every patent in the collection, try our FirstPage reports.

1. The “Recent patent comments” feature on the main page now filters out all comments relating to OG Notices (expiration and reinstatement notices, etc.). Don’t worry - these important comments are still being added each and every week…we just figured you’d rather see the ‘juicy’ stuff on the main page. Thanks to Doug Sorocco for this great suggestion.

We hope you like both of these improvements!