There is some monkey business going on with respect to the data
in Pair Bulk Data. Other pages like
this one show the future data that's
available but the patent numbers and issue dates come back as
null. Here the search works as expected if the sort is
patentNumber ascending. When it's patentNumber descending
nulls are returned in the patentNumber and patentIssueDate. I'd guess
that the future data is in the Pair Bulk Data database and that
my search request works but the data returned is modified before it
makes it back to me (the patent numbers and issue dates are nulled out).
I can get the descending search to work if I add an issue date range but
I don't think I should have to do that! I think it would be better if
the future dated data wasn't returned with fields nulled out. Try the descending sort for
yourself to see if you agree!