Intellectual Property

General Sites

World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
UN organization charged with protection of intellectual property throughout the world. Information on Treaties, industrial property (patent) and copyright law, and info on International Patent Classification codes.
American Intellectual Property Law Association
A professional association of more than 10,000 attorneys specializing in the practice of intellectual property law. They offer basic information on IP issues.
EFF "Intellectual Property Online: Patent, Trademark, Copyright" Archive
A variety of articles and information on IP issues.
Yahoo - Government:Law:Intellectual Property
Find the latest!
Stanford Copyright and Intellectual Property archive
Links to law, articles, policies, faqs.
Intellectual Property Magazine
A magazine that covers law and policy in high technology areas.
Interactive Multimedia Association's Intellectual Property (IP) and Government Affairs (GA) Committee page
Info on intellectual property issues, esp. affecting multimedia.
Intellectual Property Law Notes for Technology Companies
Patent, copyright and esp. software legal concerns.
Harvard Information Infrastructure Project
A neutral, interdisciplinary forum on the Information Infracture proposals. Working Group on Intellectual Property, Interoperability and Standards is of particular interest.
Software Patent Institute
A searchable database of non-patent source documents which include computer manuals, older textbooks and older journal articles, conference proceedings, computer science theses, and other such materials, since these are where pointers may be found to prior art.
PiperPat.com - Virtual Intellectual Property Library
Worldwide patent, patent attorney, copyright, trade mark, and intellectual property information.
Franklin Pierce Law Center Intellectual Property Mall
Intellectual Property legal resources.
IP Newsflash
An aggregator of recent IP related press articles, notices of the patent offices and important decisions in the intellectual property arena.
Patent Search Links from Richard Neifeld, Esq.
Links to various patent search databases around the world, plus introductory and advanced IP articles.

Patents:

Official Bodies:

WIPO List of Industrial Property Offices
Web links to Patent Offices online.
US Patent Office
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office general information. Search the US Patent Database.
Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO)
A test version of the Canadian Patent Bibliographic Database, covering the period from October 1, 1989 to the present.
Japanese Patent Office
Official news from the JPO - and a trial searchable database of Patent Abstracts of Japan.

References:

Introductory Manual to the International Patent Classification (IPC)
WIPO-produced manual on using, assigning and searching IPCs.
Manual of Classification
Retrieve patents by class/subclass from USPTO Manual of Classification.
Nolo Press
Information on Nolo's resources for patenting things yourself.

Searchable Patents:

USPTO Patent Full-Text and Full-Page Image Databases
US patents for search by casual users as there is a limit on number of searches by domain.
Google Patents
Full text search of the U.S. patent corpus using the Google Book Search engine. It allows inventor, assignee and patent number searches as well as keyword search.
esp@cenet
Recent European patent databases, search by country or worldwide (which includes non-European patents).

Commercial Patent Databases:

Delphion
Monthly subscription packages allow access to worldwide patent collections, prior art and Derwent information.
MicroPatent
Daily and annual subscriptions allow full-text and front-page research using databases of the United States, Europe, PCT(WIPO), and Japan.
QPAT-US from Questel-Orbit
Daily, monthly and annual subscriptions to US, European and World patent databases.
IP Search Engine
Daily and monthly subscriptions allow access to a variety of patent, trademark and other IP resources.
OnCloud8
Forty-nine cent batch orders from known patent numbers.

Other Resources:

Patent Cafe
IP Portal with navigational directory for creators and professionals needing informational resources related to patents, trademarks and copyrights.
ISTA
Japanese patent translation service; JP patent and trademark CD-ROM vendor.
Software Patent opposition
The League for Programming Freedom presents info on opposition to software patents.
Web Based Patent Searching Tutorial
UCSD Science & Engineering Library offers this information for searchers.
Gongwell Services Incorporated
Specializes in Chinese and Japanese patent and competitive intelligence research. Translation services available.

Copyright

The Copyright Clearance Center
Info on CCC and good pointers to other sites
US Copyright office
US regulations and information.

GNN IP Law page
Lots of pointers to IP pages.
Timestream, Inc.
Intellectual Property Law Primer for Multimedia Developers
Copyright & Fair Use
Overview of Copyright Law with primary materials and current case law.
Brad Templeton on Copyright myths
10 Big Myths about copyright explained.
The Copyright Website
Real-world practical information on Copyright.
Software Publishers Association
SPA information, including copyright and anti-piracy programs.
David Loundy's E-Law page
E-Law 301 info, article on "Revising Copyright Law for Electronic Publishing" and his monthly Technology Law column from the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin.

ILTguide to Copyright
Institute for Learning Technologies (ILT) at Columbia University provides information of interest to educators and others relating to copyright, including the CREDO database.
Wiretap gopher
Texts of the Berne Conventions and various US copyright laws.
University of Virginia gopher
Source for copyright information regarding libraries.
Cornell Law School
Copyright law materials - primary source materials and references. Cornell Law School Index page
Copyright & New Media Legal News
News and cases regaring current copyright law.
Law Journal Extra - Copyright

Trademarks

Basic Facts About Registering A Trademark
Federal Trademark registration instructions from USPTO.
Domain Names and Trademark Law
This web site offers background and information concerning trademarks, the Internet, and domain names. It examines conflicts between domain names and traditional trademark law and offers solutions for solving these problems.
Image Online Design, Inc. v. Internet Assigned Number Authority
A copy of the first suit brought as a result of Domain name conflict.
MicroPatent
Offers US trademark database for searching at a daily rate of $35, or at weekly/annual rates.

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