PatentSurf is a new search engine which allows you to search in a unique way by searching relationships between patents.  It appears that it may be a useful tool for novely or invalidity searches.

From the PatentSurf website:  PatentSurf allows you to "type a natural description of what you are interested in. Patents that are related to your description will be presented for your review."

 Thanks to Mark Johns for the tip.

I released a new java-based version of the Patent Pal, termed the Patent Pal Web.  It contains the same help, world, usa, exam, and blog menus.  It also provides the same search options.  It does not include the rss feeds for jobs and patent blogs or the custom menu options.  It also does not include other features like weather, radio and email.  However, because it is based in Java, it is OS and browser independent.  In my limited testing, it appears to work fine in Opera, IE, Firefox, and Safari for Windows.  Thus, users are free to use their browser and OS of choice while still enjoying the basic functionality of the Patent Pal.  In addition, some environments may not allow installation of extensions.  The new version can be used in such circumstances.  

In conducting searches with the new version, it is best to click on the icon to the right of the search field.  If you just hit enter, your selection of search engine will be reset.  Also, there is an option to set a home page for the new Patent Pal Web.   By clicking on the tools icon, you will see a pop-up asking you to enter the new home page.  After doing so, the home icon will load your selected home page.  

If you notice any function which does not seem to function properly, please let me know and I will try to fix it.  However, please note that this version is provide AS-IS to serve the patent community.  Therefore, there are no explicit or implicit guarantees or warranties nor am I responsible for any adverse result from the use of the Patent Pal Web.    

You can access the Patent Pal Web at http://web.thepatentpal.com/  

A new search is available at Esp@cenet.  It is called SmartSearch and allows users "to input familiar search terms such as keyword, inventor name, publication number, etc in any order without to having specify the search field for each term. SmartSearch brings you results from the esp@cenet database of your choice and will show you how it interpreted each search."  This search is now available from the drop down search menu in the Patent Pal.  Thanks to Marcel Rödder for the tip.

I added Eric Waltmire's Blog to the Blog menu.  His blog focuses on software and electronic arts and contains some useful information.  The Blog is located at http://www.waltmire.com/blog/

I added IPEXL to the drop-down search menu.  This search engine provides results from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, S. Korea, PCT, US, UK, and Canada.  It also includes links to machine-translations of the results.  To find out more about IPEXL go to http://www.ipexl.com/index.html

 

I added a new link in the Tools sub-menu under the USA menu.  The new link takes you to a set of Patent Tools provided by the Maxval Group.  The Patent Tools include  a beta reference picker, a patent term calculator, and a claim chart generator.  Thanks to Samuel Crumpton for the tip.  

I added Patent Retriever as an option for the search menu.  Patent Retriever allows free bulk downloads of US, PCT and European patents in PDF format.  Although Pat2Pdf and Braindex offer a similar service, I included Patent Retriever because of the ability to bulk download and mix which office you are downloading from.  Simply include the two letter country code before each patent number and separate each patent with a space.  You can bulk download up to 10 patents at a time.  I also included an entry in the Help menu for future reference.  Thanks to John Segal for this service.

IPVision's See the Forest search engine is now available from the drop-down search menu.  However, it is currently only working with Internet Explorer.

You now have the option of searching Chinese patent abstracts.  The Chinese patent office recently released machine translation of Chinese patents into English as well. 

 Thanks to Javier Torrejon for the suggestion.

I received an email recently regarding the possibility of having a custom My Feeds menu rather than individual rss feed buttons.  I have looked into this but haven't been able to find a way to enable it yet.  However, here is a possible workaround if you have a number of feeds you would like to add.  Try using a service like www.fwicki.com  which allows you to create a custom feed made up of individual feeds.  You can the create an RSS button on the Patent Pal linking to that custom combined feed.  This will allow you to have just one RSS feed with entries from a variety of individual feeds.