Espacenet
{{Short description|Patent database}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=February 2022}}
Espacenet (formerly stylized as esp@cenet)esp@cenet is a trademark of the European Patent Organisation (see community trade marks No: [https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/001123876 001123876], [https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#basic/1+1+1+1/100+100+100+100/000881896 000881896], [https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/000881813 000881813] at EUIPO).[http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/9BA3D3AA8CE3B9BBC125785700578B40/$File/Patentinfo_News_1101_en.pdf The "@" in esp@cenet – an old friend retires] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200202214957/http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/9BA3D3AA8CE3B9BBC125785700578B40/$File/Patentinfo_News_1101_en.pdf |date=2 February 2020 }}, Patent Information News issue 1/2011, March 2011, p. 5. is a free online service for searching patents and patent applications. Espacenet was developed by the European Patent Office (EPO) together with the member states of the European Patent Organisation. Most member states have an Espacenet service in their national language, and access to the EPO's worldwide database, most of which is in English. In 2022, the Espacenet worldwide service claimed to have records on more than 140 million patent publications.{{cite web |url=http://www.epo.org/searching/free/espacenet.html |title=Espacenet patent search |website=EPO web site |publisher=European Patent Office (EPO) |quote=Espacenet is accessible to beginners and experts and is updated daily. It contains data on more than 140 million patent documents from around the world. |access-date=22 October 2022}}
History
By launching Espacenet in 1998, the EPO is said to have "revolutionized public access to international patent information, releasing patent data from its paper prisons and changing forever how patents are disseminated, organized, searched, and retrieved."Michael J. White, [http://www.istl.org/06-summer/electronic3.html "Espacenet Europe's Network of Patent Databases"], Issues in Science & Technology Librarianship ({{ISSN|1092-1206}}), Number 47, Summer 2006.
In 2004, i.e. in the early years of Espacenet, Nancy Lambert considered that, although free, Espacenet, like the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database of US patents, "still tend[ed] to have primitive search engines and in some cases rather cumbersome mechanisms to download patents."Lambert, N. (2004). [https://www.infonortics.com/chemical/ch04/slides/lambert-new.pdf Internet patent information in the 21st century: A comparison of Delphion, Micropatent, and QPAT] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070708030821/http://www.infonortics.com/chemical/ch04/slides/lambert-new.pdf |date=8 July 2007 }}, 2004 International Chemical Information Conference & Exhibition, Annecy, France, 17–20 October 2004, pp 1–2. She reported it as being deliberate, on the part of the USPTO and EPO, "who have said they do not wish to compete unfairly with commercial vendors". In 2009, Espacenet offered the so-called SmartSearch which allows a query to be composed using a subset of Contextual Query Language (CQL).{{Cite web |url=http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/D5FC4FA7011B38ADC12577FC00383121/$File/Patentinfo_News_1004_en.pdf |title=Patentinfo News issue 4 2010 |access-date=14 March 2013 |archive-date=2 February 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200202215021/http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/D5FC4FA7011B38ADC12577FC00383121/$File/Patentinfo_News_1004_en.pdf |url-status=dead }}
In 2012, the EPO launched "Patent Translate", a free online automatic translation service for patents. Created in partnership with Google, the translation engine was "specifically built to handle complex and technical patent vocabulary", using "millions of official, human-translated patent documents" to train the translation engine.{{cite web|url=http://www.epo.org/about-us/annual-reports-statistics/annual-report/2012/highlights/patenttranslate.html|title=Highlights of 2012, Launch of Patent Translate|date=4 March 2013|publisher=European Patent Office|access-date=1 August 2014}} It covers translations between English and 31 other languages.{{cite web|url=http://www.epo.org/searching/free/patent-translate.html|title=Patent Translate|date=20 December 2013|publisher=European Patent Office|access-date=1 August 2014}} According to the Patent Information News' magazine published by the EPO, a 2013 independent study compared Espacenet with DepatisNet, Freepatentsonline, Google Patent and the public search facility at the USPTO. In that study, Espacenet reportedly obtained the highest score for both data coverage and customer support, and the best overall aggregated score.{{cite journal |title=Espacenet comes out top in study |journal=Patent Information News |issue=2, June 2013 |page=2 |publisher=European Patent Office |url=http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/56B4E29D008538E9C1257B8D0058BD48/$FILE/Patentinfo_News_0213_en.pdf |access-date=23 June 2013 |archive-date=15 July 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210715025133/http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/56B4E29D008538E9C1257B8D0058BD48/%24FILE/Patentinfo_News_0213_en.pdf |url-status=dead }}
In March 2016, Espacenet began offering full-text search through its collection of English, French and German patent documents.{{cite journal|year=2016|title=Full-text searching in Espacenet|journal=Patent Information News|publisher=European Patent Office|issue=1/2016|page=6|url=http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/10397BC8E8C8FE2BC1257F7A0047E766/$File/patent_information_news_0116_en.pdf|access-date=19 March 2016|archive-date=24 May 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190524160554/http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/10397BC8E8C8FE2BC1257F7A0047E766/$File/patent_information_news_0116_en.pdf|url-status=dead}}
See also
- Cooperative Patent Classification
- Global Dossier, a service available via espacenet{{cite web|url=http://www.epo.org/service-support/updates/2014/20141024a.html|title=Global dossier available in Espacenet|date=24 October 2014|publisher=EPO|access-date=13 June 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150614214256/http://www.epo.org/service-support/updates/2014/20141024a.html|archive-date=14 June 2015|url-status=dead}}
- INPADOC
- International Patent Classification
- Patent classification
- Patentscope
- Prior art
References
{{reflist|30em}}
External links
- {{official website|http://worldwide.espacenet.com/}}
Category:Bibliographic databases in engineering
Category:European Patent Organisation