2019-02-27|Google Patents Feedback

To whom it may concern

• It was a great honour meeting you at CIPO's Patent Quality Summit: Let's talk quality! (2019-02-26). As a patent analyst, I use Google Patents every day. As promised, here are feedback comments, both good and bad, on Google Patents and also on Google Search.

• Please do not become a paid service as Delphion did, i.e., spun off by IBM (free), then sold to Thomson Reuters ($$$).
  • [OK. Google Patents hired an IBM guy who originally developed IBM Patents.]

• "http://patents.google.com/" was extremely slow when it was transitioning from "http://google.com/patents/". Over time, it became fast enough to be usable.
  • [OK]

• "Event history" has "Priority to XXX" and "Adjusted expiration".
  • [extremely good]

• "Adjusted expiration" considers Patent Term Adjustment from USPTO PAIR.
  • [very good]

• "Adjusted expiration" does not consider Terminal Disclaimer from USPTO PAIR.
  • [bad]

• After Copy & Paste, "Inventor: Houston Staton, James Ashley, Sr., James Ashley, Jr." becomes "Inventor Houston StatonJames Ashley, Sr.James Ashley, Jr.", i.e., a colon and commas are lost.
  • [bad]

• "Original Assignee" is gone, only "Current Assignee" is shown.
  • [good]

• "Current Assignee" is sometimes wrong, but it is garbage-in, garbage-out from USPTO/Espacenet.
  • [bad]

• "Worldwide applications" has the year, and Abandoned/Expired patents have strikethrough.
  • [very good]

• "Classifications" is CPC instead of UPC/IPC.
  • [very good]

• "External links" should have a link to USPTO PAIR in addition to USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet, Global Dossier, Discuss.
  • [bad]

• Google Patents does not respect Google's Search Settings, specifically "Results per page" and "Open each selected result in a new browser window". Please make it so.
  • [bad]

• Google Patents does not remember "Results / page" when the value is changed from 10 to 100, for example.
  • [bad]

• In most cases, it is desirable to exclude search keywords in references/citations.
  • [feature request]

• Please add "inclaims:only" or something in order to search in claims only.
  • [feature request]

• Google Search should accept "before:YYYYMMDD after:YYYYMMDD", just like Google Patents's "before:priority:YYYYMMDD after:priority:YYYYMMDD".
  • [feature request]

• Sometimes [XXXX] is shifted. For example, EP1899935 is OK up to [0036], but [0037] on is inappropriately shifted left.
  • [bad]

• Printing a page from macOS's Safari.app causes some text to overlap. For example, EP1899935 causes overlapping text on page 2 of the PDF file generated by Print... > Save as PDF.
  • [bad]

• Patent numbers have discrepancy between Google Patents format "US20080021637A1" and Espacenet format "US2008021637 (A1)". Note 2 zeros after "2008" in Google Patents, 1 zero after "2008" in Espacenet.
  • [bad]

• The statistics of patent search result as in "About 243 results" is inferior to exact number of patents in USPTO and in Espacenet.
  • [very bad]

• The Figures panel is shown on the right-hand side so that the claims can be compared with the figures. This split-view should be the default instead of having to click a figure to activate it.
  • [very good]

• Please do automatic re-orientation of figures with AI instead of having to manually rotate each figure.
  • [bad]

• Figures are always too small, so I must re-size them. Buttons "+" and "-" should be located at the top, please. Even worse, the magnification factor is not memorised, so I have to re-size each figure every time I go to other figures and come back.
  • [bad]

• There are missing figures in many patents. For example, US7323982 lists 11 figures in the specification at USPTO/Espacenet, but only 1 figure shows up in Google Patents.
  • [very bad]

• You recently introduced highlighting of the figure numbers in YELLOW, which is very useful. However, sometimes the highlight is missing, e.g., "408" in US7323982.
  • [bad]

• The HTML file obtained by an API is different from the patent's webpage on the web browser, but has extra information. For example, the API version has "Family ID=39023488", "Family Applications Before", "Family Applications After", "Country Status", etc.
  • [very good]

• In Google Patents's search result, visited URLs do not change colour in the web browser.
  • [bad]

• Google Search should show only "https://www.google.com/patents/US7323982" instead of showing multiple other ones like "http://www.google.ca/patents/US7323982", "http://www.google.nl/patents/US7323982". As a result, visited colours are screwed up, too.
  • [bad]

• Google search results shows Tools > Any time > Custom range... The "From" and "To" fields of the Customised date range takes only the U.S. notation of "7/24/2015". Please also take "2015-07-24" which is the international standard in "ISO 9601: Date and time Representations for information interchange". Taking both formats means catching 2 stones with 1 bird for maximum satisfaction.
  • [proposal]

  

• Thank you very much for your attention.

To whom it may concern

• Recently, Google Patents has stopped providing "Status: Active", "Status: Expired", etc. Also, "Adjusted expiration" has disappeared. Are these changes temporary or permanent? Here is an example.

  BEFORE:

  US6876979B2 United States Inventor Marvin T. Ling Current Assignee Aml Ip LLC Worldwide applications 2002 US 2003 WO EP JP AU Application US10/217,871 events 2002-08-12 Priority to US10/217,871 2002-08-12 Application filed by PayByClick Corp 2004-02-12 Publication of US20040030605A1 2005-04-05 Application granted 2005-04-05 Publication of US6876979B2 2017-07-21 First worldwide family litigation filed Status Active 2023-03-24 Adjusted expiration

  NOW:

  US6876979B2 United States Inventor Marvin T. Ling Current Assignee Aml Ip LLC Worldwide applications 2002 US 2003 JP AU EP WO Application US10/217,871 events 2002-08-12 Priority to US10/217,871 2002-08-12 Application filed by PayByClick Corp 2004-02-12 Publication of US20040030605A1 2005-04-05 Application granted 2005-04-05 Publication of US6876979B2 2017-07-21 First worldwide family litigation filed

• Thank you very much for your attention.

To whom it may concern

• For my patent search, Priority Date is the most important piece of information. Google Patents shows the following.

  US11017395B2 United States
  Application US16/268,199 events
  2019-02-05	Priority to US16/268,199

• However, on USPTO Patent Center, clicking "Continuity" shows the following.

  Patent # 11,017,395
  Description	Filing or 371 (c) date
  Claims priority from a provisional application	01/19/2010

• Therefore, Priority Date of US11017395 must be 2010-01-19, not 2019-02-05 that Google Patents indicates. Please improve Google Patents's algorithm to determine the true priority date.

• Thank you very much for your attention.

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"Sunatori, Go Simon" <GS.Sunatori@HyperInfo.CA>

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