Searching for U.S. patents that encumber a standard

The USPTO (US Patent and Trademark Office) has a website that permits searches of issued patents (database extends to 1790). A separate search engine finds patent applications currently under review by the USPTO.

If you are developing a standard and you wish to avoid including patented technology in the methods included in your standard,

or

if you have developed a standard and are interested in protecting your users against trivial or non-innovative patents attached to the uses of your standard,

or

if you are a standards user and wish to avoid using standards that are encumbered by patents,

or

if you are a standards user who has chosen a standard and wish to avoid infringement on a patent that encumbers the standard,

you will want to visit the USPTO patent search site.


Here is the web page at http://appft1.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.html for a search of pending applications with the word "DICOM" in the title of the application.



Here is the returned web page:



In the next blog, I will use DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) as an example of a standard for which a user can conduct USPTO patent searches.

- Jules Berman

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My book, Principles of Big Data: Preparing, Sharing, and Analyzing Complex Information was published in 2013 by Morgan Kaufmann.

I urge you to explore my book. Google books has prepared a generous preview of the book contents. If you like the book, please request your librarian to purchase a copy of this book for your library or reading room.

tags: big data, metadata, data preparation, data analytics, data repurposing, datamining, data mining, coercive standards, data standards, DICOM, embedded patents, intellectual property, patent search, sdo, specifications, standards development organizations, uspto

Data standards should not be coercive

In a prior post, I wrote about monopolistic standards: "Yet somehow, when a committee gets together to write a data standard, they often develop a very self-centered culture that tries to eliminate the 'competing' standards."

Standards committees sometimes display group behavior that can be described as antisocial or even sociopathic. They often want their standard to be the only standard used in a data domain (self-centered behavior). If there are other standards in the data domain, they sometimes use coercive methods (bullying) to force everyone to use their standard. They might also actively enlist organizations to enforce the standard on their members.

The most common coercive argument involves telling people that everyone else is using the standard, and if they don't use the standard, they'll lose business or they will be ostracized or ignored by the user community. Coercive behavior should not be tolerated in the user community.

I've personally seen coercive behavior in colleagues who are very decent people who would never dream of bullying another person. Somehow, when sociopathic behavior is developed through a committee process, people lose sense of what they are really doing. To my way of thinking, this is just another reason to favor specifications over standards, when feasible.

-Jules Berman

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My book, Principles of Big Data: Preparing, Sharing, and Analyzing Complex Information was published in 2013 by Morgan Kaufmann.

I urge you to explore my book. Google books has prepared a generous preview of the book contents.

tags: big data, metadata, data preparation, data analytics, data repurposing, datamining, data mining, coercive standards, data standards, specifications, standards development organizations