PDF’s For Everyone

by Stephen Jenei
June 3, 2008

Rolf Claessen of IP Newsflash fame as well as patent attorney and partner with the patent law firm v. Kreisler Selting Werner in Cologne, Germany, brings us the new Free Patent PDF Download tool.  It’s free. It’s easy to use. It has broad coverage (espacenet database).

My only small peeve is that you need to register and login for downloading PDFs to avoid abuse by automated programs and I hate registering for anything.   Update:  Rolf Claesen wrote to say he wanted this to be the best patent PDF download tool available so he has removed the registration and login requirements.

Note, however, another great tool from IP Newsflash is the Patent Family Search.

John Segal sent me a note about another source for free PDF downloads of patents called the Patent Retriever (admit it, you knew there’d be a picture of a dog on the site).  Upside:  you can download US, European and PCT patent applications as PDF files for free without having to register.

In an equal-opportunity moment, the following are also available:

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  5. New FedCirc.us Caselaw Search Tool

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13 Comments

  1. Rolf Claessen wrote on June 3, 2008 at 10:54 pm

    Stephen,

    thank you very much for this kind posting! As for the fame, you are not doing too bad yourself. Your blog is one of the most read blogs in the intellectual property arena!

    Thank you for your suggestion about the registering thing. I would gladly remove the registration requirement if you have a good alternative. One thing I hate even more than registering is filling out unreadable Captchas before anything happens…

    All the best,

    Rolf

  2. LLD wrote on June 4, 2008 at 5:31 am

    Also free, useful, and no reg req’d: Patent Lens – http://www.patentlens.net/

  3. John Segal wrote on June 5, 2008 at 12:51 am

    Tried downloading us6907404 on “IP Newsflash” but it didn’t work.

    pretty lousy search if you asked me.

    I don’t mind captchas, you see them being used more and more these days I guess to prevent automated robots massacring a site. For the casual downloader, captchas are a 1-2 second affair whereas we are talkiing about minutes to fill our a registration form, verifying yourself and then trusting that the website doesnt sell your email to spam merchants.

  4. Rolf Claessen wrote on June 5, 2008 at 1:06 am

    John,

    that’s funny. I just tried us6907404 and it worked just fine.

    Captchas have to be filled out each download. Registration is a one time thing.

    Why would a patent attorney like me sell emails to spam merchants?

    All the best,
    Rolf

  5. Stephen Albainy-Jenei wrote on June 5, 2008 at 7:38 am

    Rolf,

    I would agree with you. I’m not a fan of registrations but, if there must be some barrier, it beats Captchas.

    Stephen

  6. Dirk Scotsman wrote on June 9, 2008 at 1:29 am

    I tried us6907404 as well. But I realised you had to login/register first.

    What a time waster I thought. So I went to patentretriever.com and got it instantly.

  7. Bill Eshelman wrote on June 20, 2008 at 3:34 am

    Another good one is http://www.freepatentsonline.com.

  8. Rolf Claesen wrote on June 20, 2008 at 10:02 pm

    UPDATE: No more registration and login required.

    Now it should be the best patent PDF download tool available:

    – free
    – broad country coverage
    – no captchas, registration or redirecting
    – very easy to use

    http://www.ipnewsflash.com/get_pdf.php

    have fun!

    Rolf

  9. Stephen Albainy-Jenei wrote on June 22, 2008 at 4:37 am

    Rolf,

    I feel bad about having complained. The site was already great in my mind, now I can’t see how anyone wouldn’t love this tool.

    Best,
    Stephen

  10. David Atkins wrote on June 22, 2008 at 6:33 pm

    The IPNewsflash doesnt work..

    it says “Sorry, could not find selected document. Try again. Or maybe you need to register and login for downloading PDFs to avoid abuse by automated programs.”

    what a pain in the ass!

    Patent Retriever is much easier to use. Its all there on the front page.

  11. Brenda Walsh wrote on July 2, 2008 at 12:28 am

    Just tried to download WO0069863 in PDF format from http://www.ipnewsflash.com/get_pdf.php

    But it said “Sorry, could not find selected document WO0069863”

    What a piece of garbage.

    I found http://www.patentretriever.com much easier and faster to use to get WO0069863

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