Last week I saw this news item about Google's providing search capability for US patents. Just another example where enterprise search can expose greater value of archived information when it is presented in an easy to use manner.

By the way, as of today, the name "loshin" appears in 97 hits on the patent database. Many are for an apparently unrelated person involved in transformation and display of digital information, a few refer to my non-cousin Optics expert David S. Loshin, some have references to some of my books, but most refer to my brother's books and articles on TCP/IP.

Quick comment: patents are not limited to purely new ideas, but are largely improvements on ideas that someone else has already patented. So does exposing the information in patents enable greater innovation because it is easier to find patented things to improve, or does it stifle it because the availabilit of extensive information on what has already been done discourages new ways of thinking?