5 replies to this topic

[TrevorML]

George Kovalenko is now selling a patent book. No one seriously suggests that he should simply give it away free. Rather than give the Patent Database away free, I thought that 5 posts was a price that wouldn't discomfort anyone much. It's certainly cheaper than $140.

Rob Astyk

5 posts is DEFINITELY a LOT cheaper than $140...

when I came across it being advertised by George on eBay I looked into it until I realised the cost... with the Aussie exchange and the postage it was going to be VERY expensive for me... and they are only reprints of what I assume are available for free anyway...

cheers
T

[Rob Astyk]

Hi, Trevor,

First, I want to note that I've moved this post from the "Antonios" topic because that topic had already been hijacked into unforeseen byways, partly due to my own posts. This, however, I thought deserves its own topic.

Yes, Trevor, George's book is expensive; however, I'm sure the book (I have not seen it) gives far more bang for the buck than such equally pricey tomes as Fountain Pens of the World. The latter simply shows a lot of eye-candy and offers some generalized text. If you would spend $140. on a single pen then spending $140. on a book that shows you the most basic information on that pen and many of the other pens in your collection is cheap at the price.

As for the information being available without charge elsewhere, I think you're right if you think in very narrow terms. Knowing George and having no inconsiderable experience in this matter, I believe that you would end up spending many hundreds of frustrating hours finding all the patents collected in George's book. Since I'm sure that there are patents for odd accessories and designs in George's book, you will spend a very, very long time discovering all of those patents. Even if you don't value your time very highly, you're going to amortize the cost of the book in time saved about the second or third time that you open it.

Finally, I'm going to speculate here, I expect that any annotation that George has supplied will be thorough and informative. When I began constructing the L&P Patent Database I built in a field for remarks that quickly became the heart of the database. In that field I included a summary of the patent and information that, where appropriate, links each patent to others that are similar or connected in some way. By locating the patent in time, by company and in relation to other patents and companies one can trace the history of the patent, patentee, assignee and others involved with the individual patent. In short, you can get information in our database that isn't readily available elsewhere. I expect that the same would be true of George's book.

So, yes, $140. is a lot of money and a lot more than I can afford at this time. And, yes, access to the L&P Patent Database is nowhere near so expensive. But looked at from the perspective of the information that you'll gather simply by opening George's book, it's a bargain.

Take care,

Rob Astyk

[Tinker]

I absolutely have to agree with Rob on this one - George's book is the culmination of years of research into fountain pen patents and definitely worth the money (which I will pony up eventually. . .)

It is fairly easy to find, say, all the patents that belong to the Wahl corporation, or Parker, via the online patent resources of the European Patent Office. However, only a percentage of pen patents belong to easily identifiable companies or names. The primary patent for the vacumatic filling mechanism use in the Parker Vacumatics did not originally belong to Parker and cannot be found by any search involving Parker, or by vacumatic, or any of the other terms you might expect - you have to know that it was Arthur Dahlburg who was the inventor, and it was sold to Parker much later. This is one basic and well known example - there are undoubtedly thousands of similar examples of obscure clip, filler or body design patents that George has connected with the pens they were used in. He is probably the #1 researcher of US fountain pen patents.

So, yea, it's a lot of money for a book, and I am still getting up the gumption to pony up (especially since the price will go up soon in the US due to the weak dollar), but it is well worth it. I just wish he had put it on a searchable CD (cause much as I love ink on paper, there are some things that electronic media does better).

John

[Rob Astyk]

Hi, John, Trevor, et al.,

You're exactly correct, John, in using the Dahlberg patents as an example of the limitations of some of the search capabilities available on line. I do want to take issue with one statement though.

You absolutely cannot find "all the patents that belong to the Wahl corporation, or Parker, via the online patent resources of the European Patent Office." What you do find is all of the patents that the EU Patent Office has listed. Those are not the same thing. They are also why Zavaliangos' attempt to appear to be a patent expert without doing any hard work is fairly pitiful. I don't want to explore that statement here. If you have comments on it, let's take those back to the "Antonios" topic where all this started. However, what is relevant to this discussion is the fact that none of the search engines available at this time will get you all the patents for anything without some serious work.

The EU Patent Office database has limitations as noted above and as you've pointed out, John. Google Patents has limitations because they don't seem to have the Design or other special patent categories in the database yet and because of typos. If I remember correctly there was a patent in the L&P database that I looked up some time ago and then decided to see if there were patents by that patentee that I might have missed. I queried the name on Google Patents and did not find the patent I already had. When I queried that patent by number I found that it hadn't made it into the search because the patentee's name was so badly garbled that it wasn't recognizable to the search engine.

I look at these additional search aids much as one has to look at voice recognition software these days. It's pretty good and can speedily render into text spoken words, especially read from a printed source but some of it's going to be garbled so you still need to go back and make corrections. The resource is useful but doesn't obviate the need for a human who understands and can correct the errors. The only thing that can out-research the machine is a human being willing to commit to doing the drudge work.

Take care,

Rob Astyk

[Tinker]

However, what is relevant to this discussion is the fact that none of the search engines available at this time will get you all the patents for anything without some serious work.

True, but the search engines are a valuable tool. When you have some spare time, try using either google or EPO databases and search for WAHL. Compare that to the L&P database with the same search criteria, and you will find the L&P database has only has about half of the patents that belonged to Wahl corp. Frankly when I am looking for patent information, I use both sources, with about even results about where I find more info.  But that is another discussion entirely.

John

[Rob Astyk]

Hi, John,

Actually, you're quite right about the Wahl matter. I have the patents but haven't entered them in the database because it's undergoing a rebuild to broaden its scope of information and adding to the current 1,701 entries is a damned hard and boring task that is taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r!

Take care,

Rob Astyk