google patents

[Guest]

Google now lets you search patents: HERE

Enter "tenyo" for fun.

[Guest]

Bill, thanks. That it really something. I've pleasantly spent the better part of the hour searching out stuff by Howard Thurston, Will B Wood, John W Petrie, The Great Lafayette, John Gaughan, Jim Steinmeyer... This is great!

[Guest]

Interesting, thanks for the link. Search for patent 6934002 and have a look. Seems the threshold for a patent is far less than I ever thought. Apparently if you setup webcams with multiple angles and do a magic show live, you're in violation of a patent!

Who knew?

Steve

[Guest]

Hard to believe something so trivial and obvious would have passed muster and gotten patented. Doesn't mean it would hold up if challenged though.

[Guest]

Searching patents online was possible for a long time on various sites. The real problem is finding the non-obvious ones and categorizing them. I don't see how Google advanced the art here. They merely replicate a set of data.

Best,
Chris....
www.lybrary.com

[Guest]

[Guest]

Originally posted by Chris Wasshuber:
Searching patents online was possible for a long time on various sites. The real problem is finding the non-obvious ones and categorizing them. I don't see how Google advanced the art here. They merely replicate a set of data.

I haven't tried all the patent search engines. But I will say that Google is faster than the USPTO's site; their graphics files don't require you to go get some weird plug-in for your browser; and they've OCR'ed text files from the images, so you can search for specific terms in full-txt farther back than the USPTO lets you do.

Keep searching for:
Kevin James
Mark Setteducati
Stephen B. Axtell
Lubor Fiedler
Houdini (invented a diver's suit)
Mont Davis
H. Goldin
S. S. Adams

[Guest]

Superb. I deal with patents all the time in my work, and this has several advantages over many of the other resources (USPTO, EspaceNet, Patentscope etc.). The main problem for me is that it only seems to cover US patents, but it's still great thing to have.

[Guest]

wonderfull stuff.Just a saerch with the word Illusion has produced some interesting finds. This is the thurston/dante levitation for example..


http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT ... ton+jansen

[Guest]

and this...

was it realy only patented in 1981?

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT ... ON#PPP1,M1

[Guest]

Bill, for example this website http://www.freepatentsonline.com/ has been available I think at least for about 2 years and has served my patent searches very well. I am not saying Google is bad, just copycat without anything added.

Best,
Chris
www.lybrary.com

[Guest]

Chris, I believe you're incorrect in that their search isn't anything new. Try using your link to search Pressley Guitar and you'll get over 4000 hits. Do it in Google and get 1, which happens to be the right one.

Goggle's search engine is light years ahead of any search on a stock content management system, in my opinion.

Steve

[Guest]

Steve, sure Google's search engine is the best in a general sense. I guess I am just a bit disappointed, because I would have expected more from them. In the past they were more innovative. Today they seem to merely gobble up other companies and copy.

Best,
Chris
www.lybrary.com

[Guest]

I never knew Houdini had a patent on a diving suit..


http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT ... =1#PPP2,M1

[Guest]

Karson's Zombie..

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT ... us#PPP1,M1

[Guest]

When I was a kid the old Carnegie Library in my hometown had a file of the Patent Gazette. I spent many hours reading through its pages where I found many names from magic's Golden Age.

[Matthew Field]

Originally posted by Dale Shrimpton:
and this...
was it realy only patented in 1981?

Ah yes the rubber dam trick. Invented by William Gewirtz???? That would be a shock to Lubor Fiedler.

Matt Field

[Guest]

i find this one interesting too.

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT ... PA1-IA1,M1

I also note that with this subject, it may be possible to trace the history of the I.T.R.

[Guest]

Note that this patent:

Patent number: 718547
Issue date: Jan 13, 1903

was witnessed by one E. S. Andrews.

(too bad it's not magic or gambling related . . .)

[Guest]

Originally posted by Bill Mullins:
Note that this patent:

Patent number: 718547
Issue date: Jan 13, 1903

was witnessed by one E. S. Andrews.

(too bad it's not magic or gambling related . . .)

Hey, Bill, that is fun! Since the applicant was from Saskatoon, that particular E. S. Andrews may well have been "Captain E. S. Andrews," a riverboat captain and early settler in that area. I have quite a bit of information about him - enough to rule him out as Erdnase, I think - but I was quite enthused at one time, thinking of the purported Canadian connection of the book and that gambling might have been a feature on their riverboats, as it was on ours...

Ewart Sigmund Andrews, whom Mike Perovich was first to propose as a possible Erdnase candidate, also filed several patent applications. Alas, I also have enough information about him to rule him out pretty conclusively...

[Guest]

He would of found this interesting

http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT ... e+gambling

[Guest]

Originally posted by Magicpitch:
Interesting, thanks for the link. Search for patent 6934002 and have a look. Seems the threshold for a patent is far less than I ever thought. Apparently if you setup webcams with multiple angles and do a magic show live, you're in violation of a patent!

Who knew?

Steve

Only if you make it interactive.