Template talk:Patent

Revising template

Current output formats are:

US Patent 6556992 via CAMBIA Patent Lens[1]

US Patent 6556992 "Method and system for rating patents and other intangible assets."via CAMBIA Patent Lens[2]

Standard methods of citing patents (see "How to Cite a Patent") provide more information, including at least inventor(s) and years, and sometimes date (or filing date and issue date), patent granting authority, and their location. Wikipedia:Citing_sources says "All citation techniques require detailed full citations to be provided for each source used. Full citations must contain enough information for other editors to identify the specific published work you used." The current output format, technically, contains enough information to identify the specific work used, but it should contain more. In keeping with output examples in Wikipedia:Citation_templates, I'd suggest formatting output as something like:

Wells, Brannon P. (Filed 2003-08-21, published 2005-12-06). "Method and system for rating patents and other intangible assets." U.S. Patent 6,556,992. Retrieved via patentlens.net on 2007-08-23.

That requires more fields in the template itself; something like the cite templates, with each field using an identifier, might look like:

{{patent|authority=US|patent=6556992|accessdate=2007-08-23|publishdate=2005-12-06|filedate=2003-08-21|title=Method and system for rating patents and other intangible assets|inventor=Wells, Brannon P.}}

The template could be written to provide backward compatibility with the current syntax; if no field identifiers like "authority=" or "patent=" start the second field, and there are two or three fields, it could be assumed to use the current {{patent|number|comment}} syntax. If a particular field wasn't included, like inventor, it could leave that aspect blank, as with the cite templates. I'd also look into allowing reference by patent application number as well as patent number, since it can also be useful to cite a pending patent. Although I think there are different ways of indicating a patent app number even within the US system, combining it with series number and year number or something.

-Agyle 18:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

please see use in Drawbar (haulage)

At present one of the methods leads to the patent, the other does not seem to. Please check. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 23:43, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Target link moved?

This template seems to be pointing to the wrong place, at least for US patents. Getting an error page. Thanks. /ninly_(talk) 03:14, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Merge

Why is it necessary to have this template in addition to Template:Cite patent? Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 18:00, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Because when you are mentioning a patent in the text of an article, you typically don't want the whole kit and caboodle included with {{Cite patent}}. (Also note that the template {{Patent}} calls the template {{Cite patent}}.) HairyWombat 19:29, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Is the displayed text intentionally missing the word "patent"?

Before this edit, the end of the first sentence of the article Speak & Spell (toy) was confusing. It did contain this template call:

{{patent|US|3934233}}

but that expanded to this un-helpful text:

US 3934233

which DOES NOT contain the word "patent". (!) (Hello..) Is the reader supposed to be a mind reader? (Actually, the displayed text was also a hyper-link, and the target web page probably does say something about "patents"; but some readers might not [or, might not be able to] dereference that hyper-link!)

Is that intentional? Or, is it some technical malfunction, caused by a clumsy edit to this template? (perhaps by some bumbling editor who knows "even" less than I do, about [the necessity of being careful, and double checking, when doing some] template editing )?

Meanwhile, the above edit was inserted, so that readers (especially readers of, say, printed versions of the Speak & Spell (toy) article) would be shown the word "patent", near the end of the first sentence.

Comments / advice will be appreciated. --Mike Schwartz (talk) 08:16, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

Are you saying that the third parameter should default to "patent" if "application" is not specified? I've implemented this in the template sandbox; let me know if that's what you had in mind.

• Example above:

  Current: US 3934233 

  Sandbox: US 3934233 

• With "application" in third parameter spot:

  Current: US application 3934233 

  Sandbox: US application 3934233 

Martin (Smith609 – Talk) 15:18, 27 January 2011 (UTC)

The problem was in the Speak & Spell (toy) article, not in this template. Most editors who use this template include the word "patent" in the article text. If this template was changed to now display the word "patent", as User:Mike Schwartz suggests, then most articles that use the template would be broken. I have added the word "patent" to the Speak & Spell (toy) article so it now includes, "collectively covered under patent {{patent|US|3934233}}". HairyWombat 20:07, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Moreover, including word 'patent' into template would complicate writing things like 'patents US123456789, US123456790, US123456791'. Ipsign (talk) 09:26, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

espacenet vs USPTO

With all due respect to espacenet, I would certainly prefer US patents to lead visitor to USPTO website (which is the authority for US patents by definition). So, two questions:

• are there objections to doing it in principle (so {patent|US} will generate code pointing to USPTO website)
• does anybody know how to do it? :-)

Ipsign (talk) 09:21, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

repeating above: espacenet v. USPTO

What Ipsign said.
Also, espacenet now links to error page.
How to format patent reference using USPTO address?
Thank you.
ZaphodsCatwalk (talk) 16:51, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Espacenet does not link to an error page. There was a scheduled maintenance on 8 December 2014, perhaps you visited then.

If you found an error, please supply the exact link you have used. --Wikinaut (talk) 17:21, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Wrong use of template surprising..

I found out how to fix, but US202505 0  adds " 0" and links to non-US and wrong number patent.. Maybe should be fixed to just work, or not work even more obviously? comp.arch (talk) 16:58, 30 September 2016 (UTC)