1. Wide World of Espacenet
Jason Martin
University of Central Florida

2. About
This presentation focuses on the Worldwide database.
A collaborative effort of the European Patent Office and the European Commission.
Allows access to all patents published within the last two years by member states of the EPO, EC, and WIPO.
The help page states that this database is more for end users than for doing a comprehensive patent search. Therefore I will focus on the searching fundamentals of Espacenet.

3. About
also houses a “comprehensive” collection of patents published worldwide since 1920.
Japanese abstracts from 1976 forward.
All Patents published since 1970 have a representative document with a searchable English-language title and abstract.
Most contain full facsimile images in PDF.

4. About The worldwide database is based on the PCT minimum.
In August 2002 had over 38 million patents from 71 countries.
22 million have a title, 17 million have ECLA, and more than 5 million have an English abstract.
The PCT minimum is defined by WIPO as the minimum requirement for a patent office collection that is used to find prior art. Relates to certain countries over a certain time period. Complete documents from 1920 forward for EP, FR, GB, DE, CH, US, and WO.
Abstracts for JP and RU.

5. About The database is updated every week.
English abstracts, if available, are loaded once a month.
All of the documents in have a reference document.

6. About
A reference document is the representative document of the patent family to which the particular document belongs.
It is usually a document in English.
Criteria exists for establishing the reference document.
So of all the documents in different countries this is the one used to be the “main” document. Gives all the information one needs.

7. About First, the EP document in English.
Second, the first US document published.
Third, the first GB document published.
Fourth, if none of these exist the EPO will create an English title and abstract.
Only created if it is part of the PCT minimum.

8. Searching Title Title & Abstract Applicant Inventor Publication Date
European Classification
International Patent Classification
ECLA is more precise than IPC because it has 130,000 more subdivisions. It is also updated constantly and applied retroactively.

9. Searching
Publication Number- -the number given to a patent when the patent application is published.
Application Number- -the number given to the patent when the patent application is filed.
Priority Number- -the Application Number for which priority rights are claimed.
Publication number is generally the patent number.

10. Searching All three start with country codes.
Publication Number-CCxxxxxxxxxx
Application Number-CCYYYYxxxxxxxx
Priority Number-CCYYYYxxxxxxx
See handout for a list of the country codes.
10 or less. 8 or less. 7 or less.

11. Searching
Publication Number and Application Number default to an “OR” search.
All other fields default to an “AND” search.
Multiple field searches default to “AND.”
May also use the “NOT” operator.
Enter search terms in lower case.
When you enter more than one. I have not seen a difference between upper and lower case, but lower is the advise way to search.

12. Searching
Double quotation marks search for the exact phrase. ie “water bottle”
Truncation is supported only in the title, title & abstract, inventor, and applicant search fields.
* For unlimited characters.
# For one character.
? For zero or one characters.
You may only truncate at the end of the word. Never in the middle.

14. Searching

15. Results

16. Results

18. Priority Number Search

19. Priority Number Search

21. Alternative Searching

22. Results

24. Added Bonus
I never have any patrons searching for international patents.
I eat freedom fries and I do not care about international patents.
Not so fast mon petit amie.
holds an added bonus.
At least for the users of the USPTO’s database.
So what if you do not have a need for international patents. One great thing you can do with this that helps everyone.

25. Added Bonus

26. Added Bonus

28. Wide World of Espacenet
Jason Martin
University of Central Florida