I added a tweet reader to the Patent Pal which follows the Patent Pal's Rule of the Day tweets.  The Patent Pal's Rule of the Day provides a high-level summary of one patent-related rule or law a day. This can be used to learn or relearn the patent-related rules and laws.  However, the summaries should not be relied on for making any legal decision.  Always refer to the actual text of the rule or law for legal decisions. You can follow the Rule of the Day tweets through the Patent Pal or @ruleoftheday.  

I recently came across some guides for intellectual property in China.  The guides are produced by the CCPIT Patent and Trademark Law Office in China.  I put links to the different IP guides under the China sub-menu in the World menu.  There are guides for patents, tradmarks, and domain names.   

 

I added a link to Patstats in the Case Law sub-menu of the US menu.  Patstats is a web service from the University of Houston Law Center.  It provides quarterly and annual statistics for rulings on forty major issues in patent caes.  It also includes citations to each case for which an issue was decided.  Patstats can be found at www.patstats.org. 

I added a few more patent-realted blogs to the blog menu.  I also added a Trademark sub-menu which links to a few trademark related blogs.

I added a link to the Patents Post Grant Blog in the Blog menu.  This is a blog maintained by the Reexamination/Reissue Practice Group at Oblon, Spivak.  The blog focuses on issues related to Reexamination and Reissue. 

I updated the links for Indian laws under the World menu.  I came across a site which had hypertext links for the laws rather than a pdf file.  I also included links to Copyright laws in India.

There is a new patent search tool available called Xyggy Patent Search.  It has a number of unique features which users may find useful.  Here is a summary of some of the features:

• Drag and Drop search results into the search box
• Drag multiple patents into the search box
• Toggle on/off keywords in the search box
• Remove items by dragging them out of the search box

Xyggy patent uses all available information within a patent to find similar patents.  In other words, rather than basing the results on word frequency of text-search, Xyggy patent ranks the results based on how similar the results are to the query patent(s).  It appears to be a useful new tool.  You can try it out at http://www.xyggy.com/patent.php.  I have also included Xyggy patent in the drop down search menu. 

In addition, Xyggy also offers a legal search of court cases.  The legal search is in beta status and covers US Supreme Court [Reporter U.S.: 1–544] and US Circuit Courts of Appeal [Federal Reporter F.2d: 178–999 & F.3d: 1–491]. Case coverage is incomplete for recent years.  Xyggy legal search is at http://www.xyggy.com/legal.php.  I also included it in the Case Law sub-menu of the US menu.   

1 - The drop down search menu has been moved from the search box to the Green Go button.  The button's graphic will change based on the search engine selected. This is similar to the functionality of the web version of the Patent Pal.

2 - The RSS feeds from the USPTO have been updated to work with the new page layout of the USPTO website.   

I added additional links to information on Patent regulations, etc. for Taiwan.

I added a new patent search.  Boliven offers various searches including a patent search.  Some of the features that are useful include the ability to download the file history as well as view a pdf of the patent in dual viewing pane.  Boliven also offers different analysis tools for the search results.

UPDATE: As of January 22, 2010, the Boliven website will be unavailable.  Apparently, the company has decided it does not make good business sense to continue with the website.  Accordingly, the Patent Pal has been updated to remove Boliven as an option in the Search menu.

UPDATE: I just checked the site on February 2, 2010.  It appears to still be up and running.  I had received an email indicating that the service would be discontinued.  However, since it is still functioning, I will leave the Boliven search in the drop down menu until it becomes inoperable.