PTO's Web site had 45 million visits last month. Advancements in science and technology form the backbone of the American economy.
Patents are a crucial early step in stimulating the economy.
The patent database contains the text and images of all patents dating back to 1976. The trademark data represents all pending and registered trademarks, and dates back to 1870. The more than 20 million pages in the database comprise 2 terabytes of modern-day science and technology, and more than 100 years of marketing creativity. Todd Dickinson acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce and acting Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks, demonstrated the search capabilities of the database. Patents issued to Dr. Bert Vogelstein, a cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins University, and to Alice Klein, Vincent Stanford and Norman Brickman, inventors of speech recognition software used in IBM's Aptiva computer line, were used in the demonstration.