NAME

WWW::Patent::Page - retrieve a patent page (e.g. from United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website or the European Patent Office (ESPACE_EP). )

SYNOPSIS

Please see the test suite for working examples. The following is not guaranteed to be working or up-to-date.

  use WWW::Patent::Page;

  my $patent_document = WWW::Patent::Page->new(); # new object
  
  my $document1 = $patent_document->provide_doc('6,123,456');
  	# defaults:  	office 	=> 'USPTO',
	# 		country => 'US',
	#		format 	=> 'htm',
	#		page   	=> '1',      # typically htm IS "1" page
	#		modules => qw/ us ep / ,

  my $document2 = $patent_document->provide_doc('US_6_123_456', 
  			office 	=> 'ESPACE_EP' ,
			format 	=> 'tif',
			page   	=> 2 ,
			);

  my $pages_known = $patent_document->pages_available(  # e.g. TIFF
  			document=> '6 123 456',
			);
			
			
			

DESCRIPTION

Intent:  Use public sources to retrieve patent documents such as
TIFF images of patent pages, html of patents, pdf, etc.
Expandable for your office of interest by writing new submodules..
Alpha release by newbie to find if there is any interest

USAGE

See also SYNOPSIS above

   Standard process for building & installing modules:

        perl Makefile.PL
        make
        make test
        make install

Examples of use:

  $patent_document = WWW::Patent::Page->new(
  			doc_id	=> 'US6,654,321(B2)issued_2_Okada',
  			office 	=> 'ESPACE_EP' ,
			format 	=> 'tif',
			page   	=> 2 ,
			agent   => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030516 Mozilla Firebird/0.6',
			);
			

# 'Windows IE 6' => 'Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)',

# 'Windows Mozilla' => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030516 Mozilla Firebird/0.6',

# 'Mac Safari' => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/85 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/85',

# 'Mac Mozilla' => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.4a) Gecko/20030401',

# 'Linux Mozilla' => 'Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624',

# 'Linux Konqueror' => 'Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3; Linux)',

my %attributes = $patent_document->get_patent('all');  # hash of all

my $document_id = $patent_document->get_patent('doc_id'); 
	# US6,654,321(B2)issued_2_Okada

my $office_used = $patent_document->get_patent('office'); # ep 

my $country_used = $patent_document->get_patent('country'); #US

my $doc_id_used = $patent_document->get_patent('doc_id');  # 6654321

my $page_used = $patent_document->get_patent('page');  # 2

my $kind_used = $patent_document->get_patent('kind');  # B2 

my $comment_used = $patent_document->get_patent('comment');  # issued_2_Okada 

my $format_used = $patent_document->get_patent('format'); #tif

my $pages_total = $patent_document->get_patent('pages_available');   # 101  

my $terms_and_conditions = $patent_document->terms('us'); # and conditions

my $document = $patent_document->get_patent('document'); # the loot

BUGS

Pre-alpha release, to gauge whether the perl community has any interest.

Code contributions, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.

Error handling is undeveloped.

By definition, a non-trivial program contains bugs.

For United States Patents (US) via the USPTO (us), the 'kind' is ignored in method provide_doc

SUPPORT

Yes, please. Checks are best. Or email me at Wanda_B_Anon@yahoo.com to arrange fund transfers.

AUTHOR

Wanda B. Anon
Wanda_B_Anon@yahoo.com

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Andy Lester for WWW::Mechanize, that got me thinking,

The authors of Finance::Quote, which served as an example of providing submodules,

Erik Oliver for patentmailer, serving as an example of getting patent documents,

Howard P. Katseff of AT&T Laboratories for wsp.pl, version 2, a proxy that speaks LWP and understands proxies,

and of course Larry and Randal and the gang.

SEE ALSO

perl(1).

Subroutine _countries_known()

Usage     : internal method only
Purpose   : list all entities that could give a patent
Returns   : ref to a hash with keys of abbreviations and values of entities (usually a country)  ...