Recently I posted a message about some comments made by John Terapane, Director of Group 1200. He was kind enough to send to me a clarification of my interpretation of what he said, which follows. Sorry about any confusion. I assume all of the rest of my comments are correct :-) Greg Aharonian Internet Patent News Service (for subscription info, send 'help' to patents@world.std.com ) (for prior art search services info, send 'prior' to patents@world.std.com ) (for WWW patent searching, try http://sunsite.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html ) ==================== This is John Terapane responding to the above message. I want to thank you for the additional dissemination of the information in my presentation to the Boston Patent Law Seminar. There are two points in your message that need clarification. The first concerns the comments made re the U.S. Classification system. The PTO has no plan to drop the U.S. Classification system or always use WIPO classifications rather than PTO classifications in the future. The main point of my comment was this: When the PTO network is complete and access to all major data bases is provided, it likely will make sense to have a different search strategy. Rather than always requiring a search of the U.S. Patent Classification system, examiners will decide what will constitute the best search for a particular application. In some cases relevant art, including relevant U.S. patents, may be better accessed through a search of other patent data bases or commercial data bases. The U.S. Patent Classification system remains one of the most comprehensive, detailed, and useful systems for categorizing technology in the world. It is particularly useful to examining U.S. patent applications in the U.S. Patent System. For these reasons, I expect it to be around for many years. The second clarifying point relates to the Table used in the overhead to provide information about Group 1200 in the context of other examining groups. This Table indicated PERCENT EXAMINERS, not number of examiners. [ Here is the table I originally posted. I guess he means that the second column should be Percent Primary Examiners: Group # Examiners # of Primary # Average Experience 1200 83 43 13 years 2300 187 18 4 1300 88 52 10 1800 165 25 5 2600 216 17 5 ] Again, thanks for passing the message along. John Terapane