A patent searcher looks at the American Inventors Protection Act
The system of rapid publication of patent applications prior to grant, with deferred examination, has been increasingly common since the Netherlands changed its patent law in 1964. By the start of the 21st century nearly all major patenting authorities had adopted this practice. One might have supposed that the switch to pregrant publication (PGP) by the United States, brought about by the American Inventors Protection Act, would not have changed things very much, aside from increasing the availability of patent documents in the English language. Observations since the advent of US pregrants in March 2001 have shown quite a number of differences and complications, which are explored in this article. Typical areas highlighted include the lack of a printed Official Gazette, the limited assignee data, and the lack of citation data for PGPs. The author also highlights a wide range of specific bibliographic problems, as well as major errors such as PGPs in which data from entirely independent applications are included within a single PGP.
american inventors protection act pregrant publication united states citation data patent information bibliographic data data quality aipa asignee data