http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html

How do I put in an IPC Class in the USPTO Databases?

An International Patent Classification (IPC) Mark is entered in the following formats,

ICL/H05$
ICL/H05K$
ICL/H05K0$
ICL/H05K00$
ICL/H05K001$
ICL/H05K001/$
ICL/H05K001/1$
ICL/H05K001/14$
ICL/H05K001/14

What are the truncation symbols used?

The following symbols can be used:

"$" - for unlimited right hand truncation

Limitations:
"$" may not be used in a search word with fewer than three characters
no truncation symbols are possible within a search word.

Examples:
car$ will retrieve documents containing "car", "cars", "cart", "card", "cards", "cartography", etc
co$ is not allowed because the search word has only two characters

How can I limit the year range that is searched?

In order to limit the year range to, for example, between 23 January 1790 and 27 April 1998 use the Field Code (ISD or PD). Note the date formats. Use an entry like the following;

ISD/Month/Day/Year->Month/Day/Year or
ISD/YearMonthDay->YearMonthDay

For the Patent Searching Database a search would look use (ISD) and appear like;

ISD/01/23/1790->04/27/1998 and (mouse$ and trap$)
ISD/17900123->19980427 and (mouse$ and trap$)

For the Application Searching Database this is would use (PD) and appear like;

PD/01/23/1790->04/27/2002 and (mouse$ and trap$)
PD/17900123->20020427 and (mouse$ and trap$)

Full text searching is only from 1976 however you should still be able to year limit a search of US classes using this method.

What is a quick way to cut down the number of citations being returned?

A simple method, that I use, is to search the claims only using the Field Code ACLM. An easy way to do that is given below:

ACLM/(mouse$ and trap$)

I get a listing of patents but it takes so long to load them all

Well, one solution is to put the mouse arrow over the link, press the right mouse button and choose the "Open in New Window" option. Now just repeat this for all the links you want to look at. What will happen is that you will then have a dozen browsers all going at once. You can look at the ones that are already downloaded and while you are doing this the remainder are being downloaded for you, consequently there is no waiting time to access these patents.

How can I speed up the downloading time

One solution is to disable the setting that automatically allows the browser to download images. If it is just down loading text then the download is much faster.

How do I display images

In order to display images your browser needs a particular plugin that views tiff images. The USPTO covers this at their help page.

They suggest using the plugin from Medical Informatics Engineering's "AlternaTIFF". The latest version is AlternaTIFF v1.7.6.