Fair use charter for the EPO's online patent information products

What we offer

Free patent information services

Espacenet, the European Patent Register and Open Patent Services (OPS) are available free of charge 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

• Regular maintenance outages in Espacenet are scheduled for between 05.00 and 05.15 hrs CET, Monday to Saturday. Information about additional outages is published in the "maintenance news" section at http://worldwide.espacenet.com.
• Information about scheduled maintenance outages for the European Patent Register is published in the "maintenance news" section at https://register.epo.org.
• Access to and use of these services is governed by our "Terms and conditions of use".

What we ask

Human users

Espacenet and the European Patent Register are exclusively dedicated to human users. They are not intended for bulk data retrieval.

You can help us maintain a trouble-free service by taking note of the following:

• The threshold for individual users (IP addresses) is 10 search-related actions per minute.
• Automated searches (robots) are not supported and may result in access being denied. For automated queries please use the OPS tool
• Human users encountering problems due to the service's robot-detection feature should contact the EPO using the "contact" links in the relevant applications.

Automated queries

Open Patent Services (OPS) is the solution for automated queries involving sizeable amounts of data.

In order to avoid overloading the system, please note the following:

• Access via a simple client
  • The threshold for individual users (IP addresses) is 10 search-related actions per minute.
• Access via a portal or integrated system (e.g. software packages in which OPS is only one part of the service offered)
  • For this you will need a data usage agreement. Send an e-mail including the relevant IP address/addresses to patentdata@epo.org.
  • The threshold for this usage is one request per second for family-related actions.
  • Operational circumstances may sometimes make it necessary to temporarily lower this threshold.
  • Should further operational constraints become necessary, users will be informed without delay.
• Access for automated data retrieval (robots)
  • Automated data retrieval (by robots) is permitted for reasonable amounts of data only. OPS should not be used for bulk data retrieval. If you need extremely large sets of data, please contact us at patentdata@epo.org. We offer a range of options and carriers to meet your bulk data needs.
  • For automated data retrieval you will need a data usage agreement. Send an e-mail including the relevant IP address/addresses to patentdata@epo.org.
  • The maximum traffic volume allowed is approximately 1 Mbit per second. The maximum data volume and connection rates may vary depending on operational circumstances.
  • We strongly recommend scheduling data retrieval activities by robots between 19.00 and 07.00 hrs CET or at weekends.