The IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin was a technical

publication To publish is to make content available to the general public.Berne Conve ...

produced by IBM between 1958 and 1998. The purpose of the Bulletin was to disclose inventions that IBM did not want their competitors to get

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

s on. The Bulletin was a form of

defensive publication A defensive publication, or defensive disclosure, is an intellectual property strategy used to prevent another party from obtaining a patent on a product, apparatus or method for instance. The strategy consists in disclosing an enabling descriptio ...

. By publishing the details of how to make and use the invention,

patent examiner A patent examiner (or, historically, a patent clerk) is an employee, usually a civil servant with a scientific or engineering background, working at a patent office. Major employers of patent examiners are the European Patent Office (EPO), the Un ...

s could have a searchable source of

prior art Prior art (also known as state of the art or background art) is a concept in patent law used to determine the patentability of an invention, in particular whether an invention meets the novelty and the inventive step or non-obviousness criteria ...

that they could cite against subsequent

patent application A patent application is a request pending at a patent office for the grant of a patent for an invention described in the patent specification and a set of one or more claims stated in a formal document, including necessary official forms and re ...

s filed by others on the same or similar inventions. The Bulletin has been cited over 48,000 times in various United States patents.Delphion Web site
http://www.delphion.com/search-prior_art#tdb
retrieved on June 20, 2006

References

External links

IBM notice regarding the availability of the IBM technical disclosures
(via Internet Archive) *Searchable Web site for IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin article
www.delphion.com
{Dead link, date=August 2020 (This is a commercial Web site. Registration may be required) History of patent law Technical Disclosure Bulletin Publications established in 1958 Publications disestablished in 1998

See also

References

External links