has long had an interface for searching patents, and here we see one example of an application of full-text searching of patent filings. Part of what has made patent law an arcane subfield of law has been the tedious reference work necessary to look up what has already been patented. If Google fulfills its mission of organizing the world's information, patent law will become clearer--perhaps clearly ridiculous in more than a few cases--and at length patent litigation will play less of a role in impeding technical innovation. Technology for the win.
http://scholar.google.com/
has long had an interface for searching patents, and here we see one example of an application of full-text searching of patent filings. Part of what has made patent law an arcane subfield of law has been the tedious reference work necessary to look up what has already been patented. If Google fulfills its mission of organizing the world's information, patent law will become clearer--perhaps clearly ridiculous in more than a few cases--and at length patent litigation will play less of a role in impeding technical innovation. Technology for the win.