USPTO Upgrades US Patent Database from TIFF to PDF Images

On August 23, the USPTO notified it upgraded the US patent database to use PDF rather than TIFF images. Most web browsers support PDF rather than TIFF so this is good news for searchers who want to use another database beside Free Patents Online (FPO) and Google patents.

Here's details of the USPTO notice:

"The USPTO has upgraded the USPTO Full Text and Image Database. It now uses PDF images instead of TIFF images which provides several new benefits including the ability to print full documents. Patent images may be viewed, printed and saved using a standard PDF-equipped browser. A separate TIFF plug-in is no longer required. In addition to the standard page-by-page viewing, users may now also click on a “Full Document” button to retrieve all the patent images at once."

Here's the procedure for downloading a full PDF copy of a U.S. patent:

1. Click on Full Text Images
2. Type the US Patent Number (e.g., 8,082,299) in the patent field
3. Click on the View Patent button
4. Click on the Full Pages button and see displayed PDF copy of US Patent No. 8,082,299 B2, Client-Side Caching of Pages with Changing Content

Copyright © 2013 Robert Moll. All rights reserved.