Cassis Currents No. 2
October 1998

Published by the Optical Disc Publishing Program (ODPP), a division of the Office for Patent and Trademark Information under the Administrator for Information Dissemination at the US Patent and Trademark Office, Department of Commerce.

More News on Cassis CD-ROM Series Changes

The product development phase of the Cassis CD-ROM Series migration project continues. The migration planning team has received input from representatives of the Patent and Trademark Depository Library Program, PTO public search facilities, and other PTO offices. Our goal is to offer the most flexible and efficient products, including as much "one-stop" searching as possible. Here are some of the decisions that have been made for the Cassis products of the future.

• The data from Trademarks REGISTERED and Trademarks PENDING will be merged on one disc, space permitting. In addition, "dead" trademark data will be included on this disc. "Dead" marks are registrations and applications that have been abandoned, cancelled, or expired. Images of both "live" and "dead" marks will also be included, space permitting. In addition to providing this new data, merging these two products will make your trademark searching much more efficient.
  
  
• The Patents BIB disc will be enhanced to provide information previously available on other discs. Serial number information from the Patents SNAP disc will be added to Patents BIB. (Patents SNAP publication has ceased with the 1998 issue.) Inventor information, including names and addresses, from the Patents ASSIST disc will also be added to Patents BIB. This should eliminate the need to change discs in a search. Inventor information will still appear on Patents ASSIST.
  
  
• We will take advantage of the additional disc space that DVD-ROM offers and provide more years of abstracts on the Patents BIB disc. At this time, it is unclear exactly how many years of abstracts will fit on one DVD-ROM, but we plan to fit as many years as possible.
  
  
• The assignment data from Patents ASSIGN and Trademarks ASSIGN will be consolidated on one disc.
  
  
• USAPat will migrate to DVD-ROM with the first issue of 2000. As the number of patents issuing each week has grown, so has the number of USAPat weekly discs. All of the patents issued each week will fit on one DVD-ROM disc which should make the collection easier to manage.
  
  
• The user interface is almost finalized. There will be two separate search query screens, one very similar to the Cassis screen you are used to seeing. The other screen will allow you to create a more advanced Boolean search query similar to those used with online database hosts. The search query, results, and history screens are being developed to provide the most flexible movement between discs, hits, and previous search queries.

You will be informed as more decisions are finalized.

USAPat Moves to DocDW

USAPat was recently enhanced to include the DocD for Windows (DocDW) retrieval software. Issue 98-35 was the first disc to offer both the DOS and Windows versions of the software. DocDW improves installation and printing speeds, export options, and the quality of the image on the screen. We think that you will be pleased with these improvements. Both versions will continue to be offered for a few months, but the DOS version will be eliminated after 1999 January.

In 1999 January, there will be another enhancement to USAPat. The images will be provided in a fully compliant TIFF format. This change will be transparent to most of our users since the DocDW software included on USAPat will work with both the old and new discs.

Additions to USAMark Back File Produced

The additions to the USAMark back file, discs 102–115, have been produced. These fourteen discs contain the registrations from 1997 November – 1998 August. Also included on these discs are corrections and missing images from the original set of 101 discs. The front file production will begin with the trademarks registered in 1999.

We are also working to provide USAMark Volume IDs on the Trademarks REGISTERED disc to allow for easy movement from the bibliographic text to the image of the registration.

Plans to Publish Back File of US Patents on DVD-ROM Announced

Plans to publish the entire back file of US patents on DVD-ROM were recently announced. Over the next two years, the PTO expects to publish all US patents from 1790 through 1999 on DVD-ROM. There will be approximately 650 DVD-ROMs in the collection that will replace the current USAPat back file.

New CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Production Contract Goes Into Effect

A new contract for the production of Cassis CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs was awarded to Americ Disc in August. Due to the change in contractors, there may be delays until the production routine is fully underway. We thank you in advance for your patience.

Spotlight on the ODPP Staff

In this issue we put the spotlight on the Manager of the Optical Disc Publishing Program, Bruce B. Cox. Bruce's professional background features many interesting experiences in the delivery and automation of patent and trademark information. After graduating from the University of Missouri at Columbia, Bruce began his career at the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, MO, one of the 83 PTDLs. He was the Linda Hall's PTDL Representative from 1982-1989. During this time, Bruce was chosen to serve as the PTDL Fellow to the PTO from 1986–1987. The PTDL Fellow spends one year in the PTDL Program Office sharing their expertise from the field while gaining a first-hand knowledge of the PTO. As the Fellow, Bruce was responsible for the development of all elements of a successful CD-ROM pilot project that would replace an outdated online system and grow to become the current Cassis CD-ROM Series. Bruce was also sent to the patent offices in Pakistan and the Philippines to advise them on the maintenance of their patent collections.

Bruce returned to Crystal City, VA in 1989, this time as a PTO employee in the newly formed Office of Electronic Information Products (OEIP). This office focused on the production of some of the PTO's first electronically created products, including the first Cassis discs. In 1991, Bruce took a position with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva. He spent two years working in the Industrial Property Information Office at WIPO assisting with the development of standards for the publication of patent and trademark information. While with WIPO, he visited the Mongolian Patent Office to train the staff in the use of intellectual property tools on CD-ROM and the Chinese Patent Office to advise them on automation. In 1994, Bruce rejoined the OEIP and was named Manager of the Optical Disc Publishing Program the following year.

Bruce is married; in fact, he was married the month after graduation from library school. He is interested in music and recently finished building a new bicycle. Bruce has practiced the Transcendental Meditation technique for 25 years.

New Edition of PTO Products and Services Catalog and Cassis Sampler Available Soon

The 1999 edition of the US Patent and Trademark Office Products and Services Catalog will be available soon. The Catalog lists the various electronic, web-based, and paper products available from the PTO with full descriptions and the forms for ordering them. The services offered at the public search facilities at the PTO in Arlington, VA, as well as at the more than 80 PTDLs are also described.

Free copies of the new Cassis Sampler Disc containing samples of each Cassis product will also be available soon. This CD-ROM provides both the DOS and Windows versions of Dataware's CD Answer ® software used with the searchable Cassis products. The DocDW retrieval software used with USAPat and USAMark is also included. For copies of the Catalog or the Sampler Disc, please call 1-800-PTO-9199.

Feedback From Our Customers

After the publication of the first issue of Cassis Currents, many customers returned the Customer Response Cards that were enclosed with the issue or sent comments via e-mail messages to our new cassis@uspto.gov mailbox. Thank you for your comments and questions about the future of the Cassis CD-ROM Series. We have attempted to respond to all of your messages in the format you requested.

Please continue communicating with us - we appreciate hearing from you.