Over the past few weeks, I have been enjoying PriorSmart’s new “patent complaint alert” service.  Each day, I receive an e-mail listing the most recent patent litigation complaints filed in US courts.  I like this particular service because it is free (Rubin Anders is their corporate sponsor) and because it provides direct links to PDFs of the complaints and the patents-in-suit.

The service is still in limited release, but up to 200 Patently-O readers can sign-up for the service using the following link: http://news.priorsmart.com/patent-complaints/web-invites/patentlyo-HASJY12.

See a sample complaint here: http://news.priorsmart.com/static/files/example-alert-20100803.html.

There are several other similar services:

• Justia (Free, but does not provide the actual complaint or patent number listing);
• Docket Navigator (Great service and includes same-day summaries of many decisions, but not free). Normally, their service runs about $30 per month. Darryl Towell who runs Docket Navigator just e-mailed with an offer to Patently-O readers: “Patently-O readers who send an email to patentlyo_offer@docketnavigator.com before September 1, 2010, will receive the discounted rate of $14.95/month. That discounted rate is for new subscribers and will be good through the end of 2011.”
• LexMachina (Great service, and is free for some).

Let us know (in the comments) if you have other good sources for this info.

Patent Tools: While I’m talking about patent information tools, I should also mention the new patent analysis tools offered by the company Patent Calls. http://tools.patentcalls.com/.  Interestingly, the tools were developed by well known patent plaintiff Erich Spangenberg (and his team).  Spangenberg then sold them to Patent Calls who decided to offer them as a free service. (Patent Calls makes its money by providing more detailed analysis of patents, patent infringement, and patent markets).  One feature that I enjoy from the Tools is that, for each patent, the main-page provides a direct link to additional information such as maintenance fee payments, certificates of correction, and patent family information. For published applications, the Tools also do a mark-up comparing the published claims with the issued claims.  Spangenberg’s team created a pretty good algorithm for automatically finding similar patents. However, at this point, that feature is not available for free. Of course, I should be careful in distinguishing Patent Calls “Tools” from another free service PatTools. http://www.pattools.com/.

Try the new Google Patent Search here. Advanced search here.

DDC Comments: The greatest benefit is that pre-1976 patents are now text-searchable.  This is huge for historians, but I suspect that we will now see more citations based on these older documents. Google searches are very fast as compared to other search engines.  One problem: Google is best at finding the top-twenty references related to your search.  Google is much worse at doing exhaustive searches.  Thus, if you want to find every patent that mentions a certain term, you will probably not be successful (at this point) with the Google Patent Search.  Finally, Google does not yet have a link to the PDF version of the document.

Please try out the search and leave your own comments below.

Other useful free patent search engines:

• USPTO Search
• TACSY Search
• EPO ESPACE
• CAMBIA Patent Lens (Via Gorman at SCU)