Espacenet: 20 years of free access to patent information in Europe
"The launch of Espacenet was a milestone for the European patent system and for innovation in Europe," said EPO President António Campinos. "It paved the way for the use of patent information by inventors, scientists, engineers and researchers, and reinforced the EPO's position as a leader in this field. Designed in particular to meet the information needs of smaller entities and academia, Espacenet supports SMEs, research institutes and universities in their R&D efforts by enabling them to keep up with state-of-the-art technologies from around the world."
Espacenet has its roots in the shared objective of European countries to boost innovation by facilitating access for the public to the valuable information found in patents. In response to the success of the IBM Patent Server, the first free online patent search service, the EPO member states saw the need for a free, internet-based tool offered by a public service organisation. The new tool was to be hosted in Europe and have European users' needs at its heart. The EPO, already housing one of the world's largest collections of patent data, and benefiting from co-operation with a network of member states' patent offices, was well placed to provide this service.
With 25 000 daily users, Espacenet is now one of the most frequently accessed patent information services. The EPO continually works to develop and improve its offerings as users' needs evolve. For example, to address the language barriers inherent in the system as the database grew to contain patent documents in ever more languages, the EPO developed Patent Translate, a tool for automated patent translation. Launched in 2012, the service provides free, "on-the-fly" machine translation of patents for 32 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian. In 2017 the EPO incorporated neural machine translation technology into Patent Translate to provide even more accurate translations, and the service currently sees 20 000 requests for translation every working day.
The EPO has also linked other tools and services to Espacenet, making it even more useful: with the European Patent Register, for instance, anyone can follow the grant procedure for European patent applications at the EPO, and consult all documents on file. The Federated Register, conceived in 2008, provides a single point of access taking users to the online national patent registers of the EPO's member states where they can find basic post-grant legal status information on European patents. And thanks to the Global Dossier service, everyone can now more easily track patent applications filed for the same invention at multiple patent offices worldwide. Espacenet now also includes legal status data from some 50 patent offices worldwide via the EPO's INPADOC database.
Background: About patent information
Patent information refers to the technical, legal, and business-relevant information found in patent documents. Patent information is key to furthering technological progress: with the help of tools such as Espacenet, scientists and engineers can view patent documents published by other inventors in the same field and build on their solutions to improve processes, products and inventions. Patent databases not only support R&D, but also help companies to take informed strategic decisions about market trends, potential partners, suppliers, customers and competitors. Patent publications and data can also be used to support public policy by helping to spot technology and market trends at an early stage. For specialists, such as patent attorneys and patent searchers, patent information is vital for identifying patent applications and patents in force anywhere else in the world: it provides an understanding of what innovations are protected and which ones are free to use.
About the EPO
With nearly 7 000 staff, the European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the largest public service institutions in Europe. Headquartered in Munich with offices in Berlin, Brussels, The Hague and Vienna, the EPO was founded with the aim of strengthening co-operation on patents in Europe. Through the EPO's centralised patent granting procedure, inventors are able to obtain high-quality patent protection in up to 44 countries, covering a market of some 700 million people. The EPO is also the world's leading authority in patent information and patent searching.
Further information
Media contacts European Patent Office
Jana Mittermaier
Director External Communication
Rainer
Osterwalder
Press Spokesperson
EPO Press Desk
Tel.: +49 89 2399 1820
Mobile: +49 163 8399527
press@epo.org