Patents BIB Subscriber Notice

2000 December Issue

We are pleased to provide you with the second production disc of Patents BIB using the new Cassis2 user interface on DVD-ROM. This disc also contains the CD Answer version of the product. You must have a DVD-ROM drive to access this disc.

Windows capabilities and the new and improved Cassis2 features are available, including an online Help system. In addition, we have enhanced the individual product.

• System Requirements for this disc:

Pentium PC running Windows 95 (service pack 5); Windows 98; Windows NT (service pack 4); or Windows 2000; Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher is necessary to access the online Help system; and a Second-generation DVD-ROM drive. Note that this software will not run under DOS or Windows 3.x.

• Installation Instructions:


• Insert the disc into the DVD-ROM drive. Open My Computer or Windows Explorer and locate your DVD-ROM drive. You will see the root directory when the window opens.

  PLEASE NOTE: Due to a manufacturing anomaly, there are 2 setup.exe files in the root directory. Both of these start the install process for the old CDAnswer Windows version. ***To install the new Cassis2 version, you will have to open the DataFile folder on the DVD drive and click on that setup.exe file to begin the installation process.

  (To install the old CDAnswer DOS version, click on the install.exe file in the root directory and install using the normal procedures.)

• It is recommended that you accept all defaults by clicking the Next button.
  
  
  • If you change the default directory during the first stage of the installation process, you must also change it during the second stage. If the directory location is not synchronized, you will receive a "file not found" error and the application will not run.
  • When you are asked about leaving repository files on the setup disc, accept the default. If you do not accept this default, you will copy more than 6GB to your hard drive.


• The installation process will begin. The process is in two stages, DO NOT press any buttons until the process is complete! When the installation is complete, you will receive a message that the install is complete.


• Once Cassis2 is installed, you will open the program from Start/Programs/Cassis/Cassis (unless you changed the directory).

If you have an earlier version of the software on your computer, you will be prompted to uninstall that version prior to installing the new version. Confirm that you want to uninstall, but answer NO when asked about uninstalling shared files, such as files with .dll or .ocx extensions.

• Enhancements to Patents BIB:
  
  
  1. Patent abstracts back to 1988 September are now included.
  2. Inventor information, including full addresses if the patent was not assigned at time of issue, has been added to the database.
  3. The application number is now included in the Patents BIB record.

Special Notes:

• There are approximately 3 million records on this disc. Some searches may take what seems like a long time to process. Search processing time may be especially slow if search terms are truncated on too short of a stem. For example, searching for D$ to retrieve all design patents will greatly slow down the system. Best results are achieved by truncating after four characters, D246$.
• The Session History may display the relevance ranked symbol (a yellow plus sign) for sets that have been sorted. This does not change the sort. Note that it is not possible to both sort and relevance rank a single answer set.
• The 2001 April issue will contain bibliographic information from the first few weeks of patent application publications. You will receive more information when that disc is distributed.
• The Patents BIB User's Guide is currently being revised to include changes to the software that have occurred after the 2000 August draft issue. Information will also be added regarding patent application publication data.

We apologize for our recently encountered production problems. Production is now back on schedule. The migration to Cassis2 for the Patents BIB product is complete and, from here on out, it will just be a matter of processing the data. We anticipate that the new features and capabilities will create a more efficient searching environment for you. Please contact us with any problems, comments, or questions you may have.

2001 April 3