TIFF and the USPTO

[Julia Schult]

I worked in a quasi-USPTO library a couple of years back in Sunnyvale CA
and became more familiar than most people with what the USPTO is up
against.  The main thing they are up against is the sheer volume of
patent applications and patents granted.  Any extra money they get from
the government goes to hiring more patent examiners so they can keep the
backlog of patents from getting even bigger than it is.  The USPTO is in
the business of checking patent applications as thoroughly as possible
(hah! would that it were so) and then approving them.  At one time they
were told they were supposed to support themselves by getting money from
the distribution of the patents, but as a government agency, the
information is supposed to be freely distributed.  So the people who
spend money in Washington don't think they should be giving the PTO any
money to help distribute patents, and besides the main function of the
PTO is to approve the patents, not distribute them.  When IBM started
distributing patents free over the Web, it cut into the PTO's limited
distribution system enough to push the PTO to finally put their
documents out on the Web also.

All of this is to say that while it is easy to say "it wouldn't take
much to convert all their tiffs to gifs" the fact is they put out 2000+
patents per week (yes every single week), and patents range from 3-600+
pages each.  How do you fit that into an underfunded budget when
distributing the patents to the public is not your main function anyway?

That said, we should continue to pressure the government to put the
patents out in a format that is more readily accessible, or someone
(IBM?) should do it for them.  It is only with public pressure that
money is given to an agency to improve its services, and in this case
the money required is not trivial because of the volume involved.

---Julia E. Schult
Access/Electronic Services Librarian
Elmira College
Jschult at elmira.edu