IBM Opens Bin

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

IBM announced today that it will make available free 
to the public its vast bin of 2 million US patents formerly 
accessible only to its own engineers and attorneys:

   http://patent.womplex.ibm.com/

   Welcome to the IBM Patent Server. With this World Wide
   Web server, IBM lets you access over 26 years of U.S.
   Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) patent descriptions
   as well as the last ten years of images. The first entries date
   back to January 5, 1971. You can search, retrieve and study
   over two million patents.

NYT has a report about it: www.nytimes.com