The U.S. Commerce Department's New Internet Patent and Trademarks Database

April 26, 1999

I would like to commend Commerce Secretary William Daley, acting Commissioner of Patents and Trademarks Q. Todd Dickinson, and the U.S. Department of Commerce for their hard work and dedication in establishing the new Patent and Trademark Office Internet database. This online database truly reinvents how the government does business and how business innovation can flourish with government's help. This database will help erode some of the traditional barriers that have hindered business innovation in small, rural states like Vermont.

As an avid Internet user, I have long advocated a transition to an online database for trademarks and patents. The prior painstaking process of searching existing patents and trademarks was a timeconsuming frustration for inventors. Last Congress I coauthored an amendment to the Omnibus Patent Act of 1997, which would have required the creation of computer networks to provide electronic access to patent information. I am proud that the database unveiled today achieves the goal of universal electronic access to trademarks and patents.

This new system of instant online access to the entire patent application including the drawings will greatly promote innovation and technology by showing researchers what the current science is. With this new database, there are now more than two million complete patents online dating back to 1976 and one million trademarks dating back to 1870.

This patent and trademark database could not have come at a better time. In the last two years, patent applications have increased by 25% and trademark applications have increased by 16%. In 1998, the Patent and Trademark Office received over a quarter of a million applications for patents alone, and they issued more than 150,000 patents.

Advancements in medicine, information technology, pharmaceuticals, transportation, environmental protection, manufacturing, agriculture, entertainment and countless other areas of science depend on patents. New inventions build on existing science, and existing science will now be available to anyone with Internet access whether they live in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont or Nome, Alaska or Silicon Valley, California.

This free Internet access changes the dynamic for American independent inventors and for corporate giants. Citizens who simply want to learn more by browsing the Web, students doing school projects, independent inventors and corporate research departments now can search this vast database. I have supported this development for several years and am delighted that it is fully up and running.