Espacenet

Espacenet (formerly esp @ cenet ) is a free web portal for searching patent documents. Espacenet is a development of the European Patent Office (EPO) and provides access to the internal database EPODOC with about 60 million documents (September 2007).

Esp @ cenet is considered cutting-edge development, because patent documents were only available via special libraries that Auslegehallen the patent offices or commercial databases earlier. For this reason, patent documents led a shadowy existence and remained as a source of technical information, particularly on the part of publicly funded research, mostly unnoticed, although an estimated 70 % of global technical information are stored in patent documents (→ submarine patent).

Search options

Espacenet has measured on a free database that relatively powerful search functions: For example, the parentheses and combine search terms using logical operators is possible. Truncation is also supported. With the classification search can be searched selectively in certain technical fields.

Worldwide database

The global database of Espacenet contains the required under Rule 34.1 PCT minimum documentation provided to the determination of the prior art for assessing novelty and inventive step are based. In addition, the database contains entries from other countries and time periods, as well as references to relevant documents and ECLA (European Patent Classification ) symbols.

WIPO Database

This database contains international patent applications under the PCT, which were published by WIPO in the last 24 months. These so-called WO documents are also available in the worldwide database.