Publishing to IP.com's Prior Art Database
Publishing a technical disclosure to the IP.com Prior Art Database is straightforward and easy. The following paragraphs contain certain elements that you are likely to find useful as you begin to use the system, but for complete instructions and online demonstrations for both publishing and searching, please visit our Prior Art Database at http://www.ip.com/pad Use of the publishing site requires registration with IP.com and the purchase of publication vouchers. Whereas vouchers may be purchased online using a credit card, most companies choose either to buy vouchers in bulk or to be billed monthly. Individual registration is easily accomplished online.
Companies which prefer to set up corporate accounts that share a pool of vouchers can contact an IP.com representative at 1-585-427-8180. Limited free searching of the Prior Art Database is available. Full access and robust searching such as patent examiners enjoy, including unlimited downloading of documents, is available for an annual fee. Our search facility allows for full text, concept or fielded Boolean searches.
Content of a technical disclosure
Submission of your technical disclosure for publication via the IP.com website is accomplished by a simple series of steps, each of which has instructions and links to get further information if necessary. The most significant element that is required by the disclosure submission process is the primary document - the document containing the technical disclosure itself. Your primary document should contain the full text and, optionally, any graphics associated with your disclosure. Many standard formats are accepted, including Microsoft Word® (DOC), Microsoft PowerPoint® (PPT), PDF, HTML, Rich Text Format (RTF), and clear text (ASCII) files.
If you so choose, you can put supporting materials into the attachment - a secondary file that may be uploaded during the submission process. Files of arbitrary format are accepted as the attachment, allowing you to publish output from CAD programs, graphics programs, or virtually any other program that you use. It is possible to publish a disclosure with multiple attachments by bundling the attachments using various technologies. If you use a ZIP utility for bundling, the disclosure publishing process will optionally unpack the ZIP file into individual attachments.
Solving Business Problems and Managing Risk with Technical Disclosures
In the process of publishing a technical disclosure, you will be prompted for the following elements, many of which are optional:
- Title for primary document in English (required)
- Abstract for primary document in English (highly recommended)
- Information on author/s and related persons, including name/s and relationship/s to document (optional)
- Copyright statement (optional)
- Country of origin (optional)
- Primary language of document (recommended)
- Classification (optional)
- Information on related documents - type, citation, etc.(optional)
- Filename/s and location/s (on your computer) of the primary document(required) and attachment (optional)
Anonymity
In addition, the IP.com publication process will allow you to choose whether the document should contain authorship information. If you select "no authorship" early in the publication process, several steps will be taken to help you assure yourself of anonymous publication, including:
- Your primary document will be renamed and translated into an Adobe PDF file, to remove hidden fields (such as author or company name) that are in certain formats
- This PDF file, and not your original document, will be included in the publication
- Steps in the submission process that request your contact and copyright information will be skipped
Of course, you need to be careful not to include information in the clear text, headers, graphics, or other viewable elements of your document that can be used by competitors to identify you as the author of your disclosure. Obviously, IP.com cannot remove this sort of information.
Publication of your disclosure
After you enter the bibliographic information that you decide to publish, and after you upload the primary document and (optionally) the attachment, your part of the publication process is complete. Automated processes then perform the operations necessary to digitally fingerprint the documents, package the full disclosure (bibliographic data, primary document, attachment, and fingerprints) into a zip file, assign a unique IPCOM ID to your disclosures, notarize the entire package, index the bibliographic information and the full text of the primary document, and make the full disclosure available to searchers on the web. You receive notification of the publication of your disclosure via e-mail, usually within a few minutes of your submission.
For an additional fee you can also have all or a portion of your disclosure printed in the monthly paper publication, the IP.com Journal. This Journal is distributed to libraries throughout the world, including the Library of Congress. It is also distributed to many major patent offices worldwide.
The IP.com disclosure submission process is uncomplicated, yet sufficiently flexible to be more than adequate for all your technical disclosure needs. Additional information is available on our website, but if you have any questions that remain unanswered, or want to set up a corporate account, please feel free to contact us.
