News on patent, trade mark and design databases on the internet

Abstract

Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) initiated project TechSource in 1992 to automate patent processing and searching. The project required that 1.3 million Canadian patent files (1920 to 1995) be converted to 27 million raster images and 440,000 patent files (1978–1995) be converted to 11 million pages of searchable text. The conversion process included: file preparation, microfilming, scanning, OCRing, text editing, data entry, system loading, indexing and validation. The detailed processes are described along with the results and current outstanding issues.