Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Windows 2000

Microsoft Office 2000 or later or Microsoft Excel v9 or later
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or later

Viewers for image files: The USPTO provides patent and publication images in TIFF(.tif) format, while some other USPTO image documents, e.g. in Public PAIR, are in .pdf format, as are image documents at WIPO. You will need a .pdf viewer and a .tif viewer to view the respective image document types. Most computers already have a .pdf viewer installed, but you may need to install a compatible TIFF viewer. Both .pdf viewers and .tif viewers are available as free downloads, and as paid license versions having additional features. The USPTO lists several compatible TIFF viewers at http://www.uspto.gov/patft/help/images.htm

.pdf file viewers: PatentPrism was developed using at various times Adobe Acrobat Reader (free download) and Adobe Acrobat Standard (paid license) http://www.adobe.com/ . Both have worked with PatentPrism.

.tif file viewers: PatentPrism was developed using InterneTIFF Professional, which includes multipage TIFF file handling capability; http://www.internetiff.com/ . Free versions of TIFF viewers generally allow you work effectively on line, but allow downloading or printing only one image page at a time.

A mouse, trackball, or other pointing device having at least two user-programmable accessory buttons, for assigning COPY and PASTE commands, can speed your work with PatentPrism. You can use standard commands for copying and pasting, e.g. RightClick-COPY and RightClick-Paste, or Edit-Copy and Edit-Paste, or keyboard shortcuts, but we have found assignable buttons to be convenient and time-saving with PatentPrism.