[time-nuts] Google Patent Search is Broken

Mike Monett xde-l2g3 at myamail.com
Wed Jul 1 01:27:17 UTC 2009


  The Google  patent  search  is   a   very  useful  for  studying GPS
  technology, precision  oscillators,   etc.   It  has  been extremely
  reliable in  the past, but today it started giving an  error message
  after downloading only 5 patents. The error message is:

  Google Error

  Forbidden Your client does not have permission to get URL

  /patents/download/xxx.pdf?id=yyyy from this server.

  Rebooting and clearing the cookies didn't help. I have a  static IP,
  so Google knows when I am trying to download a patent, and  it gives
  this error message instead.

  There are a few other free patent services, but they require logging
  on, they  aren't  as  easy to use, and they  don't  have  the search
  options that  google  has.  They also  give  larger  pdf  files than
  google. For  example, here is US patent #6134065 by  an  old friend,
  Steve Brittenham, who used to work at HP Boisie:

  Service      Bytes

  FreePatent : 80,794
  Wikipatent : 543,465
  Google     : 66,014

  The urls are

  http://www.freepatentsonline.com/
  http://www.wikipatents.com/

  Another service  I often use is www.pat2pdf.org, but it seems  to be
  offline today.

  So the best option is still google, but how to get around the static
  ip problem?

  The solution  is a free proxy. There are many on the web -  this one
  works fine:

  http://www.freeproxysite.com/

  I used the "TOP 10 proxies by clicks", and selected German-Proxy.de

  From there, I went to

  http://www.google.com/advanced_patent_search?hl=en&num=30

  entered a patent number, and downloaded it with no problems.

  I don't know what is causing the problem at google, but this appears
  to solve it. If you run into this and find it starts giving problems
  again, just select another proxy and continue working!
  
  Mike



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