Technical Details. Early Patents have been imaged from paper documents and stored in a TIFF format, using ITU T.6 or CCITT Group 4 (G4) compression. Early versions of Windows, e.g., NT 4.0, were installed with an image viewer application, Wang ImageVue, that could open this format. Later versions of Windows were shipped with a version of this application, ironically now owned by Kodak, that will not open TIFF files. My attempts to install the earlier version from NT 4.0 into Windows 2000 were not successful, probably due to some registry settings that were set during a setup of Windows.

The Patent Office lists only two free applications it knows of that can handle this specialized TIFF format. You can download a plugin for Netscape or an Active-X control for IE from Alternatiff, which provides you will limited online functions. interneTIFF provides a more expanded application for dealing with Patent TIFFs, free as a full-function application for five days, then it reverts to a limited function application, unless you buy it.

Workaround: With AlternaTIFF installed, you can view TIFF images, in Netscape 4.7†, you can click the right mouse button for the popup menu, then select Save as, and save the individual image as <FILENAME>.TIF. This TIFF version can be viewed and edited in popular graphics editors, like Photoshop.

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  Sorry, I haven't tested this with other browsers.

Thanks to Richard Knoppow for supplying the original instructions for this access.