USPTO and Its TIFF Image System
April 13, 2013
If you don’t have money and free patent services are not working, you may want to use the US government’s www.uspto.gov site to get the image files for a patent document. We used a fresh Windows 7 machine and got the system working, but there were a few tips we thought we would pass along.
First, you access the images by running a query from this page: http://patft.uspto.gov/. You will want to pay close attention to the syntax for querying the USPTO system which reminds me of an old-style search service.
I ran a query for 7,953,642. Here’s what the USPTO system displays:
You will want to click on the “Images” link which is in the clump of red text at the top of the page:
When you click on Images you will see this if you have a Tagged Image File Format which supports an older image standard installed:
If you so see the patent document, you can generate a PDF by installing a freeware PDF printer. Just print each page of the patent and use software like Adobe Acrobat of FoxIt which allows a user to assemble individual files into a single PDF. When bundled, you have your complete patent.
If you do not have a suitable TIFF viewer, you will have to download software which supports the USPTO file format. I recommend Alternatiff which is available without charge from this page: http://www.alternatiff.com/
We learned that getting the TIFF viewer working was painless using Opera, Version 12.1. Your mileage may vary. Our efforts to get the viewer working with Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer were not productive.
One question which comes up whenever one of my team works with the the USPTO files is, “Why aren’t these folks using the Portable Document Format file type?” Another member of my team asked, “Haven’t these folks heard about HTML5, XML, or Word for goodness sakes?”
My response: “You want to question the United States government?”
I sure don’t.
Stephen E Arnold, April 13, 2013
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