User Guide Series - Updating Intellectual Property Law Using Shepard's Intellectual Property Law Citators

Coverage

Patents

• Citations to United States patents are taken from federal court decisions, state court decisions, as published in regional reporters, and decisions of the various tribunals with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Decisions concerning the validity and infringement of patents are included. IP Shepards also includes administrative decisions includes notices that are published in the USPTO's Official Gazette. The Official Gazette citations may include expiration dates, certificates of correction, and notice of re-examinations and re-issues. Abandonment from failure to pay maintenance fees may also be included.
• The citations to U.S. patents are arranged in numerical order by category. The categories include:
  1. Original
  2. Reissue
  3. Design
  4. Plant
   
  
• IP Shepards includes an analysis of the citation, where applicable. Citing references in federal court decisions have been analyzed to determine what effect, if any, each decision had on the cited patent. This would include conclusions as to validity and/or infringement, which would be indicated by a letter-form abbreviations preceding the citing case reference. This same analysis is also done for administrative decisions. The Official Gazette also contains citing references in letter-form abbreviations to indicate USPTO notices or determinations, such as reexamination, expiration for failure to pay maintenance fees, and cancellation.

  Copyrights and Trademarks

• Similar to citations to patents, IP Shepards also provides information regarding specific federally registered copyrights and trademarks. Citations to U.S. copyrights and trademarks that have been taken from federal court decisions, state court decisions, and decisions of the USPTO can be found in IP Shepards. This includes decisions concerning the validity and/or the infringement of copyrights and trademarks. IP Shepards also provides information regarding copyrights and trademarks, that appears in Official Gazette. This would include trademark cancellations.
• Citations to U.S. copyrights are arranged by the classification of works subject to copyrights and in numerical order. Trademarks are arranged in alphabetical order, if possible, otherwise they are arranged by registration number in another division.

  Case Law

• IP Shepards also contains citations to court and administrative decisions involving intellectual property law. The citations are to federal and state court cases, as well as USPTO tribunals. The IP Shepards include all decisions reported in USPQ. Each cited reference includes a parallel citation to other reporters that contain the same decision.
• Each case citation includes an analysis code in the form of letter-form abbreviations, that tells the researcher what effect, if any, it had on the cited case, or what use was made of the cited case. This includes the history of the case, i.e. whether the cited case has been reversed, modified, etc., and the treatment of the cited case, i.e. whether the cited case has been criticized, distinguished, followed, overruled, explained, etc.).

  Using IP Shepards

• To use IP Shepards, the researcher should consult the spines of the volumes to identify the correct book. The spines indicate what particular piece of intellectual property information is available. Once looking at the correct volume, the researcher should consult the table of contents to locate the division in which the researcher?s citation appears.
• Citations to cases are organized by volume and page number corresponding to the reporters in which intellectual property law decisions are published. Patents are shown in numerical order by category, while copyrights and trademarks are listed in alphabetical order. Once the researcher finds information on their particular authority, they can look up that information to update their research.

  Electronic Versions

  IP Shepards is available on Westlaw. It is also projected to be released as a CD-ROM product in 1996.

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