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More Public Information (Patent and Trademark) Brought to You by Google

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In its Press Release 10-22 yesterday (June 2, 2010), the United States Patent and Trademark Office announced that "the USPTO has entered into a no-cost, two-year agreement with Google to make bulk electronic patent and trademark public data available to the public in bulk form". The deal is great for the U.S. government/taxpapers because currently USPTO does not "have the technical capability to provide this public information in a bulk machine readable format", and Google just fills the void. Google's patent and trademark download page can be found here. The press release goes on to state: "This arrangement is to serve as a bridge as the USPTO develops an acquisition strategy which will allow the USPTO to enter into a contract with a contractor to retrieve and distribute USPTO patent and trademark bulk public data." Would the current arrangement give Google a head start when it is time to bid for the said contract?
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