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July 14, 2009The Honorable Vivek Kundra, Chief Information O
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ce of Management and BudgetExecutive O
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ce of the PresidentThe White HouseWashington, D.C. 20500The Honorable Aneesh P. Chopra, Chief Technology O
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cerO
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ce of Science and Technology PolicyExecutive O
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ce of the PresidentThe White HouseWashington, D.C. 20500Dear Mr. Kundra and Mr. Chopra:I am writing to request your assistance in making available at no charge and for bulkaccess two of the most important legal databases maintained by the executive branch:•Publications in the Federal Register System, maintained by the National Archivesand Records Administration (NARA).•Patents, maintained by the U.S. Patent and Trademark O
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ce (USPTO).While the U.S. government maintains a minimal web presence for both databases,those web sites are only useful for casual browsing. In both cases, the underlyingsource code for the documents is only available for substantial fees.A yearly subscription to the Code of Federal Regulations for bulk access to the “SGML”source code with images is $17,000/year. The same $17,000 fee applies to otherNARA databases such as the Federal Register. While there are PDF versions of theFederal Register and text versions of the Code of Federal Regulations available forbrowsing, it is impossible to easily download them in bulk, and the underlying sourcecode which could be used for creating new versions of these documents is prohibitivelypriced.Likewise, the U.S. Patent and Trademark O
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ce makes a web site available for casualsearching and browsing, but the only bulk access to patent data is limited to the firstpage of a patent. To get the full text of current and historical patents requires a verysubstantial fee. For example, the Patent Grant Data/XML v. 4.2 ICE (Current CalendarYear Subscription) (EIP-5300P-OL) costs a breathtaking $39,000.These fees are so substantial that they actively discourage the use of these key U.S.government databases by public interest groups and scholars, limiting access to a fewwell-heeled corporations. In particular, at Public.Resource.Org, we would make muchmore extensive use of these databases if we could a
ord access, helping fulfill ourmission of making America’s primary legal materials available to the public.
PUBLIC.RESOURCE.ORG
~ A Nonprofit Corporation
Open Source America’s Operating System
“It’s Not Just A Good Idea—It’s The Law!”
carl@media.org
1005 GRAVENSTEIN HIGHWAY NORTH, SEBASTOPOL, CALIFORNIA 95472 •PH:(707) 827-7290 •FX: (707) 829-0104
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