One of my secretary’s biggest headaches is taking a pile of patents and from them generating an IDS (PTO-1449). While we use an IP forms program, it isn’t much more “automated” than a fillable PDF form.
The questions is…is there a better way of doing this? Are there other software options, preferably ones that take a list of patent numbers and automatically looks up the inventor name/issue date?
If not…would anyone find such a solution useful? (I have an idea…that could make it possible to create an IDS from a stack of patents in a matter of seconds…)
Thanks in advance for whatever insight you have.
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It’s definitely possible, as the PTO has internal software that does it. I know how you feel because the software doesn’t work for the PCT forms and they’re a big pain to fill out manually.
Steve,
The PatentOptimizer from LexisNexis is likely what you’re looking for. I haven’t used it but my colleague informs me that the Optimizer will pull all patent citations from a Word document and create an IDS auto-populating the required fields for each patent. Apparently the auto-create-and-populate IDS function saves a ton of time.
There’s more about the optimizer features here: http://corporate.lexisnexis.com/patentoptimizer/?section=DOCUMENTS#sectionsbar. The website doesn’t say much about the IDS function, but download the “PatentOptimizer Overview” PDF from the “Product Literature” section. The PDF provides this feature statement, “Export patent references into IDS forms (including EFS-Web form).” I’m sure a Lexis rep would love to give you the details on the product.