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Free US Patent Searches!

Electronic Data Systems' Shadow Patent Office (SPO) is offering 
the Internet community free electronic mail-based patent search
services until 5:00 pm CST, January 28th.  Keyword and manual
searches are now obsolete.  With the EDS SPO technology, patent
research is now based on the concepts and ideas expressed.  

The purpose of providing free searches is to determine the 
interest in such a service within the Internet community, identify
any performance bottlenecks not identified in our simulation
testing, and to obtain feedback from the Internet community.

The SPO database contains US full-text patents from 1972 to the 
present.   SPO utilizes the EDS-designed, high performance MAYA 
Concept Search Engine.   SPO is dedicating 16 of the 32 MAYA 
CPUs and 20 Gigabytes of RAM for the test.  The 1.7 
million patents contain 80 gigabytes of textual data.  MAYA 
is used to determine the 100 closest patents from the 1.7 million 
patents in the SPO database.   

To obtain a search, simply address an Internet mail message to
spo_net_test@edsr.eds.com.  SPO is offering Internet users 
access to two types of searches:  subject search and infringement 
search.  
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SUBJECT SEARCH

For a subject search, include in the mail text from 1/4 to 2 pages
of text that describes the invention and then send the message.  
A mail reply will be returned to the sender with the search 
results  The search results include the title, patent id, class
and subclass, issue date, and rank of the 100 closest patents. 
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INFRINGEMENT SEARCH 

For an infringement search, include the words "patent id:",
followed by a space, and a patent number.  The patent number must
be exactly 8 digits with a leading zero and no commas.

patent id: 04626836   

Text from the chosen patent will be compared with the 1.7 million
patents in the database.  The search results include the title,
patent id, class and subclass, issue date, and rank of the 100
closest patents.     
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WEIGHTING
   
To get narrower, more specific search results, you can emphasize 
unique features by weighting important words when doing a subject
or infringement search.  The following examples will help you
weight keywords related to a subject or infringement search.


Weighting Examples:

I.	Subject Search Example

--- keywords ---
calendaring scheduling electronic
--- keywords ---

A method of scheduling meetings . . .



II.	Infringement Search Example

patent id: 04626836

--- keywords ---
calendaring scheduling electronic
--- keywords ---
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MORE INFORMATION

For more information on constructing searches and to see sample
search reports, you may access SPO's help document by addressing
an Internet mail message to spo_net_test@edsr.eds.com  In the mail
text simply type the word help.  A help and sample file will be
returned to you.   

If you would like to send us your comments and/or suggestions,
please send a mail message to spo_info@edsr.eds.com.

The information obtained from this free trial will play a
significant role in finalizing the product to be offered to the
Internet community.  A second free trial is to be scheduled after
incorporating your suggestions.

During this testing period, the response time will depend on the
amount of activity on the system.  Based on the volume of usage
during this testing period, EDS SPO will adjust the number of
computers available to produce replies in a timely manner.
-- 
cheeks@edsr.eds.com    or     ...uunet!edsr!cheeks