Chapter 5 of the ATA Japanese Patent Translation HandbookOriginal and recently revised versions

A greatly revised version of Chapter 5 (last edited October 14, 2022) has been provided, along with a scanned PDF file of the now quite-stale original version (March 1997).

Several decades have passed since the ATA's Japanese Patent Translation Handbook was published. It has been out-of-print for quite some time, and the ATA has not reprinted it and does not seem to have any intention ever to reprint it. Their priorities seem to lie elsewhere.

There have, of course, been changes in the interim that would render significant parts of the entire work, and certainly Chapter 5, quite stale. I have therefore come up with a revised version, reflecting:

the total obviating of physically stored patent documents by the availability of USPTO and JPO online databases;
changes in statutes and the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure;
the disappearance of some online sources for patents and appearance of others;
corrections of some mechanical problems that existed with the ATA printed version;
some changes in the author's view on the usefulness of dictionaries, particularly dictionaries of those somewhat-troubling two-kanji compounds; and
other things the author has personally learned over the years.