German Patent Bulletin in assistant mode on the WWW  the first year's experience
The German Patent Bulletin has been available online on the web for over a year. To help inexperienced users, an assistant-mode access enables search technique and strategy enquiries to be formulated in plain language, and e-mail them to their selected PATLIB centre in Germany. The patent information centre will answer the question by e-mail, fax, post or telephone. This paper summarises the results of the service over the first year. The paper describes how many enquiries have been received, which user groups are taking advantage of the service, what kind of questions are being asked, how they are being dealt with by the PATLIB centres and whether the service is opening up new user groups for the patent information centres.
patent bulletin assistant mode patlib germany