Template talk:Cite patent

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[edit] Combine

This template should be combined with Template:US patent reference and Template:US patent application. — Omegatron 03:02, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I disagree, unless you can provide functionality to allow the user to go to either the USPTO database of the espacenet database as they see fit, which starts making it a somewhat complex template to use. Personally, I would always prefer the espacenet database, but some people might prefer linking to the USPTO, so the US templates have the uses and provide a different function than this template. GDallimore (Talk) 07:32, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Some people prefer USPTO, some people prefer espacenet, some people prefer Google Patents. But how do you decide which to link to in an article? Personal preference of the editor adding the link? That's not a good solution. We need to merge the templates and provide a way to link to all of the databases. See Bugzilla:10866 for a proposed solution. In the meantime, we should pick one database and stick to it. — Omegatron 14:39, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree. The problem of multiple database references has been solved in the case of ISBNs by Special:BookSources which gives a special page that gives a choice of databases to the user. I think this solution is cleaner than using multiple citation tags, one per database. Int21h (talk) 21:48, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Question

About the "usage" section... The fictional example

{{Cite patent|US|6528659|pubdate=[[2006-05-17]]|gdate=[[2007-03-17]]|fdate=[[2006-05-17]]|pridate=[[2005-05-17]] |invent1=Fox|assign=IBM|form=long}}

returns "US patent 6528659". What's the purpose of the fields which do not show up? Just wondering... (there are two "invent1" fields, the second one should probably be invent2?) --Edcolins 19:54, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

There's no purpose at the moment, and may not be in the long term, but I thought I'd suggest a standard format for this sort of information now in case the template gets extended in future. Thanks for pointing out the error. GDallimore (Talk) 21:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge to other template

It has been suggested that this page or section be merged into US patent. (Discuss)

Please consider merging the templates. --CyclePat 20:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

They do quite different things and have different uses. US patent links to the US patent database which only include US patents but can also include US designs and re-issues. This template links to the espacenet databae, which has patents from all over the world on it, but doesn't include some of the quirkier details of the US database.

So, I don't think either can quite be deprecated in favour of the other unless the templates are made more complex to include a switch that allows users to choose which database to link to. GDallimore (Talk) 21:34, 22 April 2007 (UTC)