The use of abstracts? A closer look.. - IPM

[ipm@en.com]

A followup to the previous post regarding 2 newly issued 'Internet'
patents on 9/8/98:

Though agreed that a patent abstract can at most provide a lead or tip
off to further investigate the claims of the patent, this choice is
probably not newsworthy and may best be left as another personal method
for choosing what patents to read.  In turn, it is also fair to say that
if questionability is found upon comparing the scope of the claims
between two patents, that this may very well be newsworthy.

So which is it?
Do abstracts have a use? If so, in what ways?
Was there a valid lead in the first place?
After all, the abstracts do sound so closely related.
Or do I come up empty handed? Was the initial comparison worth all the
fuss?
Let's find out...

First off, I found both patents to be very interesting to look over.  I
definitely gained insight from looking at them.
 
In both cases, the PTO did their job.
The claims are clearly distinct (guess i came up empty).
If these are considered neighbor patents, did both patents cite their
neighbors as prior art?
(came up 1 for 2 on this one..)

First, in the case of the 'advertising hyperlink'*** patents, AT+T did
cite Judson's patent as prior art.  However I do wish to draw attention
to the second case of 'accessing encoded URL's in bar codes'*** patents,
IBM nor the PTO has submitted Lucent's patent as prior art.

*** - indicates a label or phrase to identify the nature of the subject
matter which is a very narrow description at best of the patents in
question, both sets of patents are much broader

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Look at the 2 links in the last set of patents listed below and tell me
if you think IBM or the PTO 'should have' cited Lucent's patent.

How critical is citing 'prior art'?
Does the perceived lack of cited art serve as a measure or reflection as
to the quality of the examination process?
I do recall published figures in old PATNEWS posts showing the unusual
high percentage of patents that do not cite 'non-patent' prior art.

I encourage any replies on this.. are these listgroups the right forums
to post these sorts of observations?
I do not post often and know to try and not post across too many
neighbor listgroups.

Thank you,
Eric

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Method and apparatus for providing interim data displays while awaiting
of retrieval linked information
AT+T http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?patent_number=5805815

Web browser with dynamic display of information objects during linking
Judson http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?patent_number=5572643


Mechanism for retrieving information using data encoded on an object
IBM http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?patent_number=5804803

Multimedia service access by reading marks on an object 
Lucent http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?patent_number=5640193

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