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Sunday, August 29, 2010

Happy 40th!


It's the guy on the left's 40th birthday in a week


I hope his gift is the 40 year old equivalent of the 21 year old this.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Google vs. Government organization - Go!

Google has just worked out a deal with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office where they will host 10 terabytes of patent and trademark data for download to individual users. That essentially includes all granted patents and trademarks and published applications with full text and images. The documents are available for patents and trademarks on separate pages with links to different classifications of items. The download consists of a zip file containing an xml document with all of the details. The prior method for accessing this bulk data was via DVD data discs at a significant cost to the requester. The downloads are free of charge. The Google Public Policy Blog announcement is here, and an the USPTO press release is here. This is kind of amazing. Kind of a lot.