pod2text WWW::Patent::Page.pm > README
perldoc -t WWW::Patent::Page > README

NAME
    WWW::Patent::Page - get a patent page or document (e.g. htm, pdf, tif)
    from selected source (e.g. from United States Patent and Trademark
    Office (USPTO) website or the European Patent Office (ESPACE_EP). and
    place into a WWW::Patent::Page::Response object)

SYNOPSIS
    Please see the test suite for working examples. The following is not
    guaranteed to be working or up-to-date.

      $ perl -I. -MWWW::Patent::Page -e 'print $WWW::Patent::Page::VERSION,"\n"'
      0.02

      $ perl get_patent.pl US6123456 > US6123456.pdf &

      (command line interface is included in examples)

      http://www.yourdomain.com/www_get_patent_pdf.pl

      (web fetcher is included in examples)

      use WWW::Patent::Page;

      print $WWW::Patent::Page::VERSION,"\n";

      my $patent_document = WWW::Patent::Page->new(); # new object

      my $document1 = $patent_document->get_page('6,123,456');
            # defaults:
            #       office  => 'ESPACE_EP',
            #           country => 'US',
            #           format      => 'pdf',
            #               page    => undef ,
            # and usual defaults of LWP::UserAgent (subclassed)

      my $document2 = $patent_document->get_page('US6123456',
                            office  => 'ESPACE_EP' ,
                            format  => 'pdf',
                            page    => 2 ,  #get only the second page
                            );

      my $pages_known = $document2->get_parameter('pages');  #how many total pages known?

DESCRIPTION
      Intent:  Use public sources to retrieve patent documents such as
      TIFF images of patent pages, html of patents, pdf, xml, etc.
      Expandable for your office of interest by writing new submodules.
      Alpha release by newbie to find if there is any interest.

USAGE
      See also SYNOPSIS above

    Install prerequisites before testing.  Testing will fail without prerequisites.
    Do not report failures to CPAN TESTERs without installing prerequisites.
    Edit 200_micropatent.t with your username and password before testing.


         Standard process for building & installing modules:

              perl Build.PL
              ./Build
              ./Build test
              ./Build install

              or

              perl Makefile.PL
              make
              make test TEST_VERBOSE=1
              make install

    Examples of use:

      $patent_browser = WWW::Patent::Page->new(
                            doc_id  => 'US6,654,321',
                            office  => 'ESPACE_EP' ,
                            format  => 'pdf',
                            page    => undef ,  # returns all pages in one pdf
                            agent   => 'Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4b) Gecko/20030516 Mozilla Firebird/0.6',
                            );

            $patent_response = $patent_browser->get_patent('US6,654,321(B2)issued_2_Okada');

BUGS
    Pre-alpha release, to gauge whether the perl community has any interest.

    Code contributions, suggestions, and critiques are welcome.

    Error handling is undeveloped.

    By definition, a non-trivial program contains bugs.

    For United States Patents (US) via the USPTO (us), the 'kind' is ignored
    in method provide_doc

SUPPORT
    Email me at Wanda_B_Anon@yahoo.com

AUTHOR
            Wanda B. Anon
            Wanda_B_Anon@yahoo.com

COPYRIGHT
    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the same terms as Perl itself.

    The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included
    with this module.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
    Andy Lester, the authors of Finance::Quote, Erik Oliver for patentmailer,
    Howard P. Katseff of AT&T Laboratories for wsp.pl, version 2, a proxy
    that speaks LWP and understands proxies.

SEE ALSO
    perl(1).

Subroutines
  new
    NEW instance of the Page class, subclassing LWP::UserAgent

  country_known
    country_known maps the known two letter acronyms to patenting entities,
    usually countries; country_known returns undef if the two letter acronym
    is not recognized.

  parse_doc_id
    Takes a human readable patent/publication identifier and parses it into
    country/entity, kind, number, type, ...

         CC[TY]##,###,###(V#)Comments

         CC : Two letter country/entity code; e.g. US, EP, WO
         TY  : Type of document; one or two letters only of these choices:
                    e.g. in US, Kind = Utility is default and no "Kind" is used, e.g. US6123456
                    D : Design, e.g. USD339,456
                    PP: Plant, e.g. USPP8,901
                    RE: Reissue, e.g. USRE35,312
                    T : Defensive Publication, e.g. UST109,201
                    SIR: Statutory Invention Registration, e.g. USH1,523
          V# : the version number, e.g. A1, B2, etc.; placed in parenthesis
          Comments:  retained but not used- single string of word characters \w = A-z0-9_ (no spaces, "-", commas, etc.)

  get_page
    method to use the modules specific to Offices like USPTO, with methods
    for each document/page format, etc., and LWP::Agent to grab the
    appropriate URLs and if necessary build the response content or produce
    error values

  terms
    method to provide a summary or pointers to the terms and conditions of
    use of the publicly available databases

  _load_modules
    internal private method to access helper modules in WWW::Patent::Page

  _agent
    private method to assign default agent

