By Donald Zuhn — USPTO Announces New Patent Public Search Tool In a Patent Alert email distributed to stakeholders last month, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced the replacement of four legacy search tools — the Public-Examiner’s Automated Search Tool (PubEAST), Public-Web-based Examiner’s Search Tool (PubWEST), Patent Full-Text and Image Database (PatFT), and Patent Application Full-Text and Image Database (AppFT) — with the Office’s new Patent Public Search (PPUBS) tool. That replacement took effect on September 30. The Office noted that PPUBS provides for more convenient, remote, and robust full-text searching of all U.S. patents and U.S. patent application…
