A 3-D printer from Z Corporation ranges in price between $15,000 and $60,000, but Joe Titlow, the vice president of product management, said the value outweighs the price for these companies. "This technology enables the ability to create physical models," said Titlow in an interview with ABC News. "It enables them to do something amazing and increase innovation; they can design a product, print it out and get instant feedback of their model." The Z Corporation printers don't just print models and sculptures, but fully operable wrenches, tools and even parts for a car.

According to Z Corporation, these printers have been sold to Motorola, Nike and Toyota.

Is this true? 

Michael Mock of Rapidform responds to some questions about the feasibility of printing a functional wrench from scan data from a Z Corp 3D scanner, as seen in the video embedded above, which has seen over 5.4 million views on YouTube.

Design prototyping technologies are the modern tools of inventors and other companies, like 3D Systems and Axis Prototypes also appear to be doing interesting work for innovative clients.

Who else is using amazing technologies to help inventors visualize and prototype their innovations? Let us know in the comments below.

In the span of a century, IBM has evolved from a small business that made scales, time clocks and tabulating machines to a globally integrated enterprise with more than 400,000 employees and a strong vision for the future. The stories that have emerged throughout our history are complex tales of big risks, lessons learned and discoveries that have transformed the way we work and live.

These 100 iconic moments—these Icons of Progress—demonstrate our faith in science, our pursuit of knowledge and our belief that together we can make the world work better.

The number of patents obtained in the United States and in many other countries around the world hardly begins to tell the story of innovation by IBM.

For every invention that is patented by IBM, there are probably thousands more inventions and innovations that are not patented but are protected intellectual property in defensive publications or technical disclosures. As well as leading in patents, IBM has been a leader in the effective use of defensive publishing for over half a century. IBM's Technical Disclosure Bulletin and all its technical disclosures since 1958 have been published as part of IP.com's Prior Art Database.

The  recent addition of IBM Redbooks to the IP.com Intellectual Property Library is an effective extension of the ongoing collaboration between IP.com and IBM to make their non-patent literature and technical disclosures easily accessible to patent examiners and inventors everywhere.

Congratulations, IBM, on a century of achievements that have changed the world.

IP.com research and analytics professionals are engineers and scientists with backgrounds in physics, optical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, materials science, chemistry, and life sciences. All our research professionals have many years of experience practicing in their respective industries as well as several years of experience performing intellectual property research.

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The world’s most innovative corporations entrust IP.com with defensive publication through our acclaimed Prior Art Database — an industry-recognized go-to source for patent examiners and searchers worldwide.

Go beyond just searching — discover an interconnected world of intellectual property at IP.com.

Our weblog, Securing Innovation, designed as a resource for the intellectual property community, includes links to other interesting blogs and useful IP Resources.

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Do you know of another intellectual property resource that should be considered for inclusion in this list of helpful IP Resources? Help us out here. Please let us know in the comments below, and we'll add more to our blog's sidebar. While we're updating our blog sidebars, are there additional Intellectual Property Blogs that we should include in our blogrolls? Something new? We're always looking for new IP Blogs, Tech Blogs and Business Blogs that would be of interest to our readers.

What preceded the grant of this patent to Alexander Graham Bell over his competitor Elisha Gray is the stuff of intellectual property legend, the classic "race to the patent office" as it is often characterized in the telling.

It's interesting, today, while Congress considers a bill named the "America Invents Act" an act to amend the Patent Act, in which one of the fundamental changes proposed it a move to a first-to-file system, similar to many other jurisdictions, versus the current US patent system based on first-to-invent priority.

The legal significance of this proposed change in the Patent Reform Act of 2011 is being discussed this week on leading patent blogs, like Patently-O, here and here. It's interesting, today, as a backgrounder to the story of the Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray patent application controversy, the details of which are summarized in Wikipedia.

Alexander Graham Bell was a tutor for the deaf while pursuing his own research into a method of telegraphy that could transmit multiple messages over a single wire simultaneously, a so-called "harmonic telegraph". Bell formed a partnership with two of his students' parents, including prominent Boston lawyer Gardiner Hubbard, to help fund his research in exchange for shares of any future profits.

Elisha Gray was a prominent inventor in Highland Park, Illinois. His Western Electric company was a major supplier to telegraph monopoly Western Union. Bell was in competition with Elisha Gray to be the first to invent a practical harmonic telegraph.

In the summer of 1874, Gray developed a harmonic telegraph device using vibrating reeds that could transmit musical tones, but not intelligible speech. In December 1874 he demonstrated it to the public at Highland Park First Presbyterian Church. On February 11, 1876, Gray included a diagram for a telephone in his notebook. On February 14, Gray's lawyer filed a patent caveat with a similar diagram. The same day, Bell's lawyer filed (hand-delivered to the U.S. Patent Office) a patent application on the harmonic telegraph, including its use for transmitting vocal sounds. On February 19, the patent office suspended Bell's application for three months to give Gray time to submit a full patent application with claims, after which the patent office would begin interference proceedings to determine whether Bell or Gray were first to invent the claimed subject matter of the telephone.

At the time, the USPTO required the submission of a working patent model for the patent application to be accepted, with the acceptance process often taking years, and with interference proceedings often involved public hearings—although the U.S. Congress had abolished the requirement for patent models in 1870.[1] However, Bell's lawyers argued strenuously for an exception to be made in their case, likely on the basis of the Congressional amendment to the patent law.

On February 24, 1876, Bell traveled to Washington DC. Nothing was entered in his lab notebook until his return to Boston on March 7. Bell's patent was issued on March 7. On March 8, Bell recorded an experiment in his lab notebook, with a diagram similar to that of Gray's patent caveat (see right). Bell finally got his telephone model to work on March 10, when Bell and his assistant Thomas A. Watson both recorded the famous "Watson, come here" story in their notebooks.

How differently might the controversy have played out between Alexander Graham Bell and Elisha Gray if, back in the day, they'd had today's intellectual property technology, like the Creative Registry and the Prior Art Database, to establish authoritatively, who was the first to invent?

The system allows for the processing of dynamic and focused search strategies. The user can input a plurality of search features into the GUI of the system and can assign their priority. One of them can be classified as focused/high priority search feature over others. The system also allows for inputting plurality of keywords into the GUI to help ranking of the result. In a preferred embodiment, keywords, or portions or complete sentences or paragraphs can be listened by utilizing text to speech conversion technology. This allows users to go through a long list of patents/publications without requiring to read them.

That should be a welcome innovation for a new generation of patent searchers, who can't yet read. ;-) 

Now, stop searching patents and go home and play with the kids.

Patent Attorney Vincent LoTempio looks closely at the details of this remarkable achievement by IBM.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted an all-time high 219,614 United States utility patents in 2010 – up 31 percent over 2009. All but one of the companies in the Top 50 are up from 2009, most shattering records and many posting double-digit percentage gains.

IBM continues to hold down the #1 patent rankings position, which it has done for 18 consecutive years, with a record 5,896 patents, up 20 percent from 4,914 in 2009. IBM is the first company to Break 5,000-Patent Mark in a Single Year.

The number of patents obtained in the United States and in many other countries around the world hardly begins to tell the story of innovation by IBM. 

For every invention that is patented by IBM, there are probably thousands more inventions and innovations that are not patented but are protected intellectual property in defensive publications or technical disclosures. As well as leading in patents, IBM has been a leader in the effective use of defensive publishing for over half a century. IBM's Technical Disclosure Bulletin and all its technical disclosures since 1958 have been published as part of IP.com's Prior Art Database.

The  recent addition of IBM Redbooks to the IP.com Intellectual Property Library is an effective extension of the ongoing collaboration between IP.com and IBM to make their non-patent literature and technical disclosures easily accessible to patent examiners and inventors everywhere.

Congratulations, IBM, on a century of achievements that have changed the world.

IP.com provides an electronic means for placing technology into the public domain. It's fast, affordable, and highly effective. It's defensive publishing.

Defensive publications submitted to IP.com's Prior Art Database are:

• published electronically on a real time basis;
• digitally fingerprinted and date-stamped as irrefutable proof of the content/date;
• published twice each month in The IP.com Journal;
• made available via the web and libraries around the world;
• searched worldwide by patent examiners;
• an integral part of corporate IP strategies; and
• reduce the costs of IP administration by preserving your right to use technology without the cost of patenting

How it works
Technical Disclosures
Benefits
Publish

It's not a silver bullet, but one defensive publication in the Prior Art Database can kill a competitive patent, worldwide!

"An intellectual property world where Intellectual Property Organizations (IPOs) support a common search and examination environment so each has the ability to produce and reproduce equivalent search results for each application that is examined."

Korea is recognized globally as an innovation leader with its membership in the "IP5", the forum representing the top five intellectual property offices in the world. In addition to Korea, the IP5 includes the United States, China, the European Union, and Japan, and thanks to the new agreement, Korea will now join the other IP5 countries in offering the resources of IP.com's Prior Art Database in order to ensure the quality and strength of patents.

IP.com announced a formal agreement with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) for the use of IP.com's Prior Art Database (PAD). The agreement was overseen by KIPO's representative Director Mr. General D.H. Jae and IP.com's exclusive Korea partner Global Techlink Inc. (GTL), an intellectual property consultancy, and signed by GTL CEO Mr. Johney Kim on October 18, 2010, at Seoul's Daejeon Government Complex.

"We are incredibly honored to be partnering with the Korean Intellectual Property Office to offer them complete access to the Prior Art Database," said Thomas J. Colson, CEO, IP.com. "Since only one existing prior art can invalidate a patent, the PAD is essential to a thorough vetting of any patent application. Companies and individuals who now apply for sole control of their intellectual property in Korea can now be confident that they have been subject to a rigorous and comprehensive patent approval process by the KIPO."

GTL CEO Kim added, "Local patent quality will be improved by the launch of IP.com's PAD service. Patent analytic firms, companies, universities, and organizations will no longer be dependent on ineffective research methods, and will have better knowledge of international trends and histories in research and development."

IP.com has the most extensive prior art database in the world, with IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Sony, and other global companies publishing their prior art through IP.com. In addition to the IP5, the intellectual property offices of 34 countries around the world now rely on IP.com's PAD, and that number continues to grow.

The U.S. Commercial Service, the trade promotion arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, along with the Korean Association for Intellectual Property Service (KAIPS) honored IP.com and its Korean partner Global TechLink Inc. (GTL), in an official event at the Grand InterContinental Hotel in Seoul, Korea, on December 9, 2010.

The “Defensive Publication Strategy Seminar” marked the official introduction of IP.com’s Prior Art Database to Korea under formal agreement with the Korean Intellectual Property Office. Among the presenters were Man Gi Paik, Chairman, KAIPS; Mark O’Grady, Commercial Attache, U.S. Embassy Korea; Thomas J. Colson, CEO, IP.com; and Johney Kim, CEO, Global TechLink. In attendance were a number of representatives of the international business community, as well as Korean and U.S. government officials.

“It was a great honor for us to have both the American and Korean governments to join forces in recognition of this new relationship,” said Colson. ”As a member of the IP5 countries, Korea is among the leaders in intellectual property development and patent applications, and we are proud that IP.com’s database will play an integral role in assuring a seamless approval process for corporations, organizations, and individuals.”

KAIPS Chairman Paik is a qualified patent attorney with Kim & Chang who also acts as a high-tech policy consultant to the Korean Government. He is also a member of the Intellectual Property Policy Committee of KIPO, and the vice chairman of the Intellectual Property Protection Association (AIPPI) in Korea.

The Five IP Offices (IP5) is the name given to a forum of the five largest intellectual property offices in the world that is being set up to improve the efficiency of the examination process for patents worldwide. The members of IP5 are:

• European Patent Office (EPO),
• Japan Patent Office (JPO),
• Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO),
• State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO),
• United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

The vision of the IP5 Offices is global co-operation, which has been defined as "the elimination of unnecessary duplication of work among the IP5 Offices, the enhancement of patent examination efficiency and quality and guarantee of the stability of patent right". The objective is to address the ever-increasing backlog at the world's five biggest intellectual property offices. As the world sees economic barriers between nations fade away, innovators want their intellectual creations protected concurrently in multiple major markets. Hence, applications for the same technology are filed at more than one patent office. The solution to the backlog problem is to reduce, to the maximum extent possible, the duplication of work which takes place at each office for a family of patent applications.

The IP5 Offices account for 90% of all patent applications filed worldwide and for 93% of all work carried out under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

With its built-in Wi-Fi system, you can control the Parrot AR.Drone using the built-in accelerometer in your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad device. On-board cameras (one forward facing, one facing down) let you see in real time what the pilot sees as you complete complex flight maneuvers. You have to see it to believe it.

This looks like something 26 year old Ashish Bhat, the inventor of the world's smallest unmanned aerial vehicle, would have dreamed of when he was a young boy. Bhat has been recognized as one of the outstanding innovators under the age of 35 on Technology Review's TR35 list for development of the world’s smallest and lightest autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle he calls the Carbon.

The best toys often seem to be carbon copies of the latest inventions and, with tomorrow's technology today, the sky's the limit. What innovative toys and gadgets are on your wish list?

IP.com's Intellectual Property Library has a feature called "More-Like-This" powered by TextWise, an affiliate company of the Manning and Napier Group of Companies.

Semantic Signatures® are a new way of representing and analyzing semantic information (meaning) in text. Semantic Signatures, produced by TextWise’s Trainable Semantic Vectors (TSV) technology, provide a rich semantic representation of the multiple concepts and topics contained in a body of text. Semantic Signatures can be constructed for a wide range of texts including individual words, phrases, word lists (e.g. metadata), short passages (such as text advertisements or image labels), web pages, or full text documents (e.g. technical articles).

Here's a funny informercial spoofing the LOL Cats meme that shows how it works.

(AdRants was all over this, and we can see why --  very creative way to conceptualize sophisticated technology, with humor, and cats. We'd like to see more like this! LOL)

The More-Like-This feature in IP.com's Intellectual Property Library uses a sophisticated semantic engine to locate publications based on concepts rather than a keyword (text) search. To search using this engine, enough information to allow the formation of an accurate semantic signature is required. Note the engine is presently restricted to English language documents and queries.

One method of creating a More-Like-This query in IP.com's Intellectual Property Library is to use a pre-existing document. This is why documents in the Library with a reasonable amount of English content have an option to perform such a query. In addition to using a Library document, this page also enables the use of the engine with text gathered from a web page or manually entered text.

Is that cool technology, or what? And, of course, there are patents.

Intellectual Property of TextWise

Below are the patents issued to MNIS, TextWise LLC, and to Syracuse University (with full commercial rights to TextWise)

From the Press Release:

“TextWise facilitates near effortless querying for patent searchers and we’re pleased to be working with Innography as the leader in IP business intelligence,” says Connie Kenneally, President of TextWise. “The incorporation of our technology into Innography’s latest release mitigates the need to perform repetitive searches that rely solely on identifying keywords to generate relevant search results. In contrast, our semantic search performs well with very long queries and one does not have to find the perfect keyword combinations to get the most relevant results.”

A TextWise search is performed by incorporating the full context of either a paragraph, claim, abstract or any longer piece of text to generate more relevant matches to similar information contained in the US patent database. “TextWise takes an innovative approach to facilitating rapid identification of patents for monetizing IP assets when coupled with Innography’s intellectual property business intelligence solution,” said Doug Miller, Chief Marketing Officer at Innography. “Our customers have expressed great interest in patent semantic search, so we are very pleased to be offering this new functionality as an option with their Innography subscriptions.”

The target areas where this joint offering would be most advantageous are:

• Expediting products for clearance from infringing on other offerings

• Rapid idea screening for patenting

• Lead identification for patent licensing, sales and patent acquisitions

• NPE defense / invalidity protection

A demonstration of Innography Fall ’10™, including the TextWise patent semantic search feature, can be viewed on the Innography website.

About Innography
Innography® delivers a comprehensive, online Intellectual Property Business Intelligence (IPBI) application that enables companies of all types and sizes to achieve the optimal return on their IP investments. By correlating patent and trademark data with financial, litigation and other key business information, Innography instantly generates a variety of unique visualizations to help organizations reduce the time it takes to perform IP research and reduce associated legal expenditures. This enables corporations to get products to market faster, uncover new and more lucrative revenue sources, keep better track of competitors, manage litigation claims, and stay on top of additional IP-associated functions. Visit http://www.innography.com to view a brief online product demo or call 1.512.306.8688 for more information.

For the original version of this Press Release visit PRWeb.

Browse IP.com search results for the latest patent applications and patents granted to some of the world's most innovative companies.

Sign up for your free site registration ... use your Google or Yahoo ID for really fast access. Avoid those download captchas and save/share your favorite queries easily!

Who else is hot?

James Dyson, the brilliant British industrial designer behind the eponymous Dyson vacuums, bladeless fans, hand driers and other products, is a prolific inventor with hundreds of patents and patent applications to his name. This dynamic list tracks them all for you.

Mark Zuckerberg, the boy wonder who created Facebook and currently the youngest billionaire in the world, is not only the subject of a successful Hollywood biopic (The Social Network), he is also a prolific inventor. Here is a list of all the patents and applications listing Mark Zuckerberg as inventor or co-inventor.

Which inventors and innovative companies would you be interested in following on IP.com?

And be sure to sign up for your free site registration ... use your Google or Yahoo ID for really fast access. Avoid those download captchas and save/share your favorite queries easily!

U.S. patent and application landing pages in the Intellectual Property Library now provide access to even more page images without downloading the full PDF.

More features are planned for the coming months.

In German-speaking nations, November 9, the birthday of glamorous Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr, is their "Inventors' Day" or Tag der Erfinder. Patent Attorney Stephen Albainy-Jenei explains at Patent Baristas in this week's Blawg Review.

Composer George Antheil and Lamarr submitted a patent application for a secret communication system in June 1941. On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and “Hedy Kiesler Markey”, Lamarr’s married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies and was intended to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam.

Argentina marks Inventors' Day, their Día del Inventor, on September 29, the birthday of national hero Laszlo Biro, inventor of the ballpoint pen or, as many outside the US call it, a "biro".

Do any other countries celebrate inventors with a special day?

Improbable Research is the name of the organization that takes note of improbable research, publishes a magazine called the Annals of Improbable Research, and administers the Ig® Nobel Prizes. And the winners are...

Funny, one of the winners of this year's Nobel for Physics, Andre Geim, was the recipient of an Ig® Nobel Prize in 2000 for levitating frogs with magnets. No kidding.

Andre Geim of the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) and Sir Michael Berry of Bristol University (UK), for using magnets to levitate a frog. [REFERENCE: "Of Flying Frogs and Levitrons" [pdf] by M.V. Berry and A.K. Geim, European Journal of Physics, v. 18, 1997, p. 307-13.] NOTE: Ten years later, in 2010, Andre Geim won a Nobel Prize in physics (for research on another subject).

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but, 'That's funny..." —Isaac Asimov

Okay, we've added the Ig® Nobel Blog to our blogroll.

"The trouble with explaining what prior art is stems from the fact that everyone already thinks they know what it is," says Gene Quinn. Read his explanation of Prior Art in the recent blog post on IP Watchdog.

Where can you find Prior Art?

IP.com's Intellectual Property Library is a free international database of patent and patent-related publications. It's goal is to encourage worldwide access to resources where innovators can easily locate and explore Intellectual Property (IP) including patents, technologies, and related art. The Library's collections contain an ever increasing number of international patent databases as well as carefully selected non-patent literature (including IP.com's Prior Art Database, which has been an industry standard since the year 2000.

It was inevitable that these popular iPhone smartphones and iPad touchscreen tablets would be used to search patents and trademarks. Patent and trademark apps have already started appearing in the iTunes store, some for free, with names like Apptorney IP, Patent Finder, and Patent Genius,

 see more Lolcats and funny pictures

 Now, an innovative law firm that specializes in the practice of intellectual property law, including patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret, computer, franchise and unfair competition law, has launched the latest app for searching United States Patents and Trademarks, Banner & Witcoff’s IP Lawyer.

Banner & Witcoff's IP Lawyer is a free iPhone application providing iPhone-customized full search access to patents and trademarks issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office as well as corresponding assignments.

Banner & Witcoff's IP Lawyer also provides a comprehensive library with up-to-date Patent Local Rules for district courts throughout the country, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Evidence, the Manual Patent Examination and Procedure, the U.S. Constitution, 37 C.F.R., links to international patent offices, and additional tools and resources.

Apple recently reported strong earnings for its third fiscal quarter of 2010, with strong iPhone, Mac and iPad sales helping revenue exceed analyst expectations. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, "The company in the quarter released the iPhone 4, which CEO Steve Jobs characterized as the most successful product launch in the company's history. Apple also launched the iPad during the third quarter, with shipments totaling 3.27 million units."

Sooner or later, we'll probably see IP.com's Intellectual Property Library and the Prior Art Database available as an app for iPhone and iPad, too. What do you think? Would that be cool, or what?

IP.com`s Intellectual Property Library is in the links of the Library of Congress Business References for Patents. This isn't the only way in which the Library of Congress collaborates with IP.com to record and preserve a permanent record of prior art, assuring that the modern, digital record of prior art is permanently recorded in the traditional print collections of the Library of Congress.

The IP.com Journal is the print and CD counterpart to the IP.com Prior Art Database. The IP.com Journal is published twice per month. It contains all disclosures digitally notarized and made available since the previous publication. It may also contain some disclosures which have been marked to appear in the print journal prior to being made available online. The IP.com Journal is just one of the methods that IP.com employs to ensure that disclosures published to our databases are permanent and forever available. Each edition of the journal is distributed to libraries and law offices around the world .

The IP.com Journal contains a table of contents of included disclosures, printed summary information for each disclosure, an index of keywords, and one or more CD-ROM disks containing each complete disclosure along with its digital notarization record.

Most searchers access Prior Art data from the website or from a periodic data-feed. However, IP.com also distributes physical copies of IP.com Journal to various locations, including the Library of Congress.

The Prior Art Database is a vehicle for defensively publishing ideas (often as "technical disclosures") in order to prevent someone else from patenting them. It assures an invention's novelty is established around the world.

The Prior Art Database is the venue of choice for the world's most innovative corporations, including IBM, Siemens, Motorola and many others. It allows both individuals and corporations to publish and search reliably, with the assurance that published technical disclosures are part of the permanent record of prior art in such established library collections with the added security of a digital notational record, its "fingerprint"of the time and date of public disclosure of every innovation published in IP.com's Prior Art Database.

For example, here's some recent IBM Redbooks publications.

IBM Redbooks publications are developed and published by the IBM International Technical Support Organization (ITSO). The ITSO develops and delivers skills, technical know-how, and materials to IBM technical professionals, Business Partners, clients, and the marketplace in general.

The ITSO works with IBM Divisions and Business Partners in the process of developing IBM Redbooks, Redpapers, Web Docs, workshops, and other materials. The ITSO is part of the ibm.com organization within IBM Sales & Distribution.

The ITSO's value-add information products address product, platform, and solution perspectives. They explore integration, implementation, and operation of realistic client scenarios that include PeopleSoft, Linux, Windows, SAP, Oracle, and others.

IBM Redbooks are the ITSO's core product. They typically provide positioning and value guidance, installation and implementation experiences, typical solution scenarios, and step-by-step "how-to" guidelines. They often include sample code and other support materials that are also available as downloads from this site.

Redbooks are available as hardcopy books, in IBM Redbooks CD-ROM collections, and on the Internet.

IBM Redbooks is on Facebook. You can also follow IBM's Twitter feed for Redbooks @IBMRedbooks and you can follow IP.com on Twitter @ipdotcom, as well.

The addition of IBM Redbooks to the IP.com Intellectual Property Library is an effective extension of the ongoing collaboration between IP.com and IBM to make their non-patent literature and technical disclosures easily accessible to patent examiners and inventors everywhere.

Since 2002, IBM's Technical Disclosure Bulletin and all its technical disclosures since 1958 have been published as part of IP.com's Prior Art Database. IBM technical disclosures (from 1958 through today) are available for a fee through IP.com. Documents can be purchased through the following: IP.com Prior Art Database. As indicated on the IBM website: "They are also kept on file with Patent & Trademark Offices and U.S. Government Depository Libraries. Searching/copying services are NOT provided by any PTO or Government office."