BPAI Decisions Now Text Searchable, Sort of
A text searching capability is now available for searching publicly available final decisions of the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences that are posted on the Board’s Final Decision FOIA web page, http://des.uspto.gov/Foia/BPAIReadingRoom.jsp. Specifically, the database of final Board decisions that are posted on the Final Decision FOIA web page will be searched for a text string entered into a text search field and the identity of any decision(s) containing the string will be returned.
Now, if only you could search for ones that were acually binding precedent . . . .
Now, if only you could search for ones that were acually binding precedent . . . .
3 Comments:
The new "search capability" of Board decisions indicates that the PTO is either populated with complete morons who have no idea what they're trying to accomplish, or else they know exactly what they're doing, and are taking yet another step to deliberately screw attorney's ability to represent their clients.
You used to be able to run a Google search using "site:http://www.uspto.gov/go/dcom/bpai" to search Board decisions, and then you could use double quoted phrase searching, AND, OR etc to zero in on what you want. It worked pretty well.
This new search is absolutely useless. For example, If you put in "statutory subject matter" in double quotes, you don't get the section 101 cases, you get everything that uses the three terms, with no calibration for "nearness" or relevance or anything else. It's barely better than going through every single case by hand.
For a long time they had turned off Google's access to new Board decisions. It looks like that is still the case.
Morons.
After an hour or so of digging and trying to figure out why I can no longer full text search decisions through Google, I reached the exact same conclusion...particularly after anonymous confirmed what I was seeing. It does appear that you still can full text search opinions prior to 1/17/2007 in the manner you described.
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