New Search Tool at FedCirc.us
A new search tool was released on Friday over at FedCirc.us - and, since it is April 2nd, you know we are not fooling you.
The new tool is simple...it's powered by Google, so you already know how to use it.
Head on over to http://search.FedCirc.us to check it out. Note that the page design and layout may change slightly over the next couple days as we put the finishing touches on it, but the functionality will be there.
Here's how it works:
A simple, Google-powered search box is provided on the left side of the page. Search results are presented under the box once a search is performed (Note: the page is pre-loaded with a search right now). You know the Google drill....enter your search string and click the button. A series of tabs appears below the search box. Clicking on these tabs will focus your search results as follows:
"FedCirc.us Case Reviews" - this tab gives you FedCirc.us case reviews that match your search criteria. Use this to quickly find our analysis of a given case our to quickly find our commentary on a particular topic.
"Court opinions" - this tab is truly amazing...and powerful. It presents the results of your search performed on .PDF's of court opinions. Think about that for just a second...and consider the power of this tab....the results presented are direct links to slip opinions that match your criteria. We've had a lot of fun testing this out...it gives interesting results when searching case names, keywords, and citations. Go ahead...get creative and give it a whirl. You can use all standard Google search terminology (quotes, parens, booleans, etc). If you draw a blank and need a little help coming up with an example, try some of the searches highlighted above the search box.
"Leading commentary" - We're really excited about this. We've called on our patent blogging friends and have enrolled their wonderful sites into a Google-powered custom search engine. Clicking on this tab gives you results from only these sites, providing a quick and easy tool for finding the leading patent commentary on the web. We think the patent community is blessed to have so many insightful and critical bloggers on the job, and we're proud to provide this gateway tool that, we hope, will present their content to a wider audience.
"News" - this tab presents the results of an unrestricted Google news search of your search terms. We have found this helpful for finding news stories about particular cases...and the parties involved in those cases.
"Web" - this tab gives the results of an unrestricted Google web search. Because you never, ever know.... But be warned, we are not filtering these results and you can't be sure what you might stumble across.
The page has a few other useful features outside of the search functionality. A "blog bar" appears on the far right. This gives you a live search for patent-related content across all blogs on the web, always presenting the most recent blog entries. Glancing over to the right will always give you a snapshot of patent topics being discussed on the web. Note that the blog bar is not restricted to the leading commentators behind the search engine....it's a search of all blogs on the web. Above the blog bar is a listing of the leading commentators. If you want to learn a little bit more about these guys, click these links to go directly to their main site or bio.
Overall, we hope that you wander on over to our new search tool and give it a whirl. Let us know what you think and we always appreciate suggestions and comments.