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Do you plan to repost this in every story remotely related to patents and web browsers?

If it is so much of a problem for you, why not just use pat2pdf which is a "script [which] fetches the pages of a U.S. patent document from the USPTO patent database and converts them into a single PDF file." which "is reported to run on Linux, FreeBSD, IRIX and Mac OS/X." (according to the homepage).

If you wish you can complain to the USPTO about no having a linux/mozilla version of whatever software it is you are talking about. Chances are they will tell you about the many other ways availible to obtain the patents you are looking for.

However, the idea that the USPTO is somehow denying your constitutional rights by not having a version of that software for linux/mozilla is asinine.

Actually, there is a great script here that is easier to use and better than the patent office's plugin anyway.

Try it if you ever need to look up patents.

United States Patent Application
20020027173 Apparatus and method for circular vortex air flow material grinding

To download it as a pdf document try pat2pdf

The KDE equivalent of the open command is kfmclient. Unfortunately, it takes URLs as arguments, not filenames or urls with no protocol prefix. Here's a little script called 'k' that wraps kfmclient with a more friendly interface.

The title, abstract and disclosure part of a patent don't really affect what it covers. What's important is the CLAIMS. The patent may describe a very narrow implementation but the claims may try to claim a much wider area of "innovation" which includes this particular implementation.

I'm downloading the patent now to take a closer look at the claims.

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Here it is.

Now pay up.

You can use this script instead.


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