WAVE MEASUREMENT - Determination of wave height, force, period, and 

 direction using, for example, stationary electronic or pressure 

 gages, acceleration-measuring buoys, or remote-sensing radar or 

 sonar equipment. 



WIND NEASUREMENT - Determination of wind velocity and direction near the 

 sea surface, including the use of anemometers on instrumented buoys. 



WOOD PRESERVATIVE - A treatment for preventing rot or fouling damage to 

 wood used in the coastal zone. 



2. Assignment of Keywords to Patents . 



The keywords were defined using the "Glossary of Terms" in Volume III 

 of the SPM as a guide, and were assigned consistently to all patents 

 having, according to the SPM definitions, the same functional properties. 

 In many cases this practice led to the assignment of keywords that con- 

 flicted with the patent title. As an example, in coastal engineering a 

 jetty is technically a barrier built at an inlet to prevent shoaling at 

 a harbor entrance by channeling tidal flow and retarding sand movement 

 along adjacent beaches. The term is also commonly used to describe a 

 groin, a similar structure designed to hold or accumulate sand on a beach 

 to prevent erosion. For this collection, a patent titled "jetty," but 

 describing a shore protection structure, was keyworded "groin" not "jetty.' 

 Problems also arise when foreign technical terms are translated into Eng- 

 lish. For instance, in many French patents, such as patent 3,849,990 

 described on the example page in Figure 3, the term "heave" is used for 

 "surf" or "waves." 



Selecting keywords for the patents involved a compromise between 

 keeping the subject 'index a manageable size and making it thorough. To 

 focus attention on just the major points in each patent, words were 

 picked which described the contents of first, the claims, and second, 

 the other parts of the text. Problems were encountered whenever an in- 

 ventor proposed a design for an entire system, then included only a small 

 component in the claims. An example is a patent which described in detail 

 a design for a floating small-craft pier while just the fenders were cov- 

 ered by the claims. Besides "pier fender," the keywords "pier, floating" 

 and "small-craft pier" were added to represent the material in the text. 

 Since only the claims may be of interest to patent attorneys and examiners, 

 and the rest of the text may be valuable to engineers as an explanation 

 of the claims and as general technical material, the indexing system, 

 based on both the claims and the text, will provide more patents than may 

 be useful in researching a patent application, but less than all that may 

 be of value in searching for literature. 



VI. THE BIBLIOGRAPHY 



1. Information in the Annotations . 



Volume I of the appendix includes the annotations for selected patents 

 3,295,231 to 3,551,369, issued during the years 1967 to 1970. Volume II 



29 



