Free Pint is the brain-child of a gentleman named Will Hann who produces and edits it under the rubric Willco Limited. It's free, weekly, and covers a wide variety of topics. The edition we looked at included articles on everything from great books on the Internet, to finding patent information, to virtual communities.

Here's a sampling from that issue:

"TIPS AND TECHNIQUES

" 'Patent information on the Internet - can you afford to ignore it?'
"by Emma Turner

"An item recently appeared in the Daily Telegraph which perfectly illustrates the importance of patent information [1]. It relates how bomb disposal teams in the Second World War had problems defusing the German bombs dropped on Britain which failed to explode. When they tried to defuse these bombs, some blew up. Without a construction plan they could not solve this problem. The word Rheinmetall was written on the casing of these bombs. Some bright spark had the idea of visiting the Patent Office and looking up the name. It transpired that in the 1930s the company had harboured plans of expanding into the British market and had lodged patents accordingly. Once found, the patent revealed that a new type of fuse design was employed in these bombs. The description given in the patent allowed the disposal squads to safely defuse these unexploded bombs.

"This is an extreme example, but it does illustrate the potential usefulness of the information contained within the millions of patents that are in the public domain. Patent information is vitally important for a variety of reasons. A patent may well be the only place that information about a particular technology is ever published and available in the public domain - it has been estimated that 85 percent of the information in patents is never published anywhere else [2]. In addition, what may initially appear to be a bright and original idea may, upon further investigation, prove to have been developed already. A search of the patent literature could prevent a costly R & D bill and maybe even litigation...."

Obviously, Mr. Hann and company take seriously the type and quality of information they include in their newsletter. For those readers interested in thoughtful commentary on Web issues this is a resource you'll want to add to your collection. Recommended.