Search services

If you have reached your limits with English-language searching, why not contact us for assistance? The experts at the EPO's Asian Patent Information Services are skilled in the languages and can provide you with the following services:

• NEW: Chinese patent monitoring
• Legal status information
• Japanese SDIs
• Japanese subject-matter searches

Chinese patent monitoring

We can monitor new Chinese patent and utility model publications (laid-open publications, granted patents, registered utility models) according to your particular needs. Your watch profiles (e.g. with IPC classes, names and/or keywords) will be passed on to the Chinese Patent Office's "Intellectual Property Publishing House" (IPPH). Keyword searches will be conducted in the title, abstract and claims. A first test run of your new profile will be provided free of charge and sample data will be supplied to help create your final search profile.

The IPPH will monitor your profile at your preferred frequency, e.g. fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or half-yearly.

The results will be delivered to you within a few working days. Depending on your particular interests, the results will include

• a database printout, showing the monitored profile
• human-aided machine translations of the bibliography and/or abstract and/or main claim and/or all claims of the documents which were found based on the profile
• a representative drawing

Prices

We will charge a flat fee of EUR 95 for the initial creation of your watch profile. This fee only applies once the watch profile has been created and the final order has been placed.

In addition, the following charges apply, depending on the number of results and the output format:

• basic fee: EUR 15 (no or one result)
• bibliography, main claim, drawing: EUR 12/per document (more than one result)
• bibliography, all claims, drawing: EUR 15/per document (more than one result)
• bibliography, title, abstract, main claim, drawing: EUR 15/per document (more than one result)

Human-aided translations of full documents (bibliography, claims, specification, drawings) can be supplied upon request. As the costs for this service depend on the length of the original Chinese document, please contact us for a cost estimate.

Please contact us if you have any further questions.

Top of page

Legal status information

The EPO's Asian Patent Information Services offer legal status searches for documents from Japan, China, Chinese Taipei and Korea. According to your requirements, we can provide you with annotated reports in English or German which are based on legal status information relating to the periods during and after the grant procedure, and during legal proceedings (partially provided).

For up-to-date legal status information on Japanese industrial property rights (patents, utility models, trade marks and designs), we use the English-language PATOLIS Information Service, one of the most comprehensive sources of legal status information on Japanese industrial property rights. We can also provide additional information such as citations (partially provided), domestic priorities, data on divisionals, and the names of the parties to various proceedings.

As the database printouts from the PATOLIS Information Service are in English, we can deliver them on their own without any further explanations.

For Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean documents, legal status information is available in free databases hosted by the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO), the Taiwan Patent Office (TIPO) and the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO). As part of the information is currently only available in the original languages, we will search in these sources on your behalf and provide you with annotated reports.

We will usually answer your requests for legal status information within one or two working days, in urgent cases within a few hours. The results of our legal status searches can be sent to you by letter, fax or e-mail depending on the urgency. Preliminary information can be supplied by telephone.

Prices

• Annotated legal status reports for Japanese documents: EUR 26 per query and document
• Database printouts for Japanese documents (without annotations): EUR 13 per query and document
• Annotated legal status reports for Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean documents: EUR 23 per query and document

Legal status watches

We can monitor changes in the legal status of documents from Japan, China, Chinese Taipei and Korea. With every legal status watch run, you will receive a printout of the legal status of the documents that are being watched. Any new information is highlighted and explained.

Legal status watches take place on a two-weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or annual basis, in line with the updates to the databases.

Prices

• Legal status watch for Japanese documents: EUR 20 per document/watch run
• Simultaneous monitoring of >10 Japanese documents: EUR 17 per document/watch run
• Legal status watch for Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean documents: EUR 17 per document/watch run

For bulk orders please contact us for information on our special conditions.

Ordering

Click here to submit your order for a legal status search/watch for a Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese or Korean document.

Top of page

Japanese SDIs

We use the PATOLIS Information Service, one of the most up-to-date sources of information on Japanese industrial property rights, to carry out SDIs on behalf of our clients. SDIs take place on a two-weekly, four-weekly, quarterly, half-yearly or annual basis.

Profiles (e.g. with IPC classes) are prepared jointly with our clients. A cost estimate and a test run of a newly developed profile will be supplied free of charge.

Top of page

Japanese subject-matter searches

The EPO’s Asian Patent Information Services use the PATOLIS Information Service to carry out subject-matter searches in Japanese on behalf of clients.

Search profiles are prepared jointly with our clients. Results and output formats can be discussed in detail and copies of documents can be supplied. We can also provide a translation of the search result.

Please contact us for further details and a free test run of your profile.

European Patent Office
Product Distribution and Specialised Services
Asian Patent Information Services
Rennweg 12
1030 Vienna
Austria

Tel.: +43 1 52126 4545
Fax: +43 1 52126 4197
e-mail: asiainfo@epo.org

Top of page