New Espacenet
European Patent Office (EPO)
Espacenet is a free patent search tool accessible to beginners and experts. It contains data on more than 120 million patent documents from around the world and is updated daily. Supporting information can help you understand whether a patent has been granted and if it is still in force.
With its worldwide coverage and search features, Espacenet offers free access to information about inventions and technical developments from 1782 to today.
You can use Espacenet to:
• search and find patent publications
• machine-translate patent documents
• track the progress of emerging technologies
• find solutions to technical problems
• see what your competitors are developing
The (smart) search box displayed on the Espacenet landing page allows users to enter inventor or applicant names, numbers, dates, keywords and classes in any order, without having to specify what exactly they want to search. Based on the search terms, the system will interpret the search fields intended by the users.
Smart search also accepts command line searches expressed using field identifiers and functions in Contextual Query Language (CQL). Field identifiers (there are 22 in all) are entered before the search terms and indicate the fields in which the search terms are to be searched.
Users can access an advanced search area by clicking on the “Advanced search” toggle in the main toolbar. The advanced search will guide users in building their search statement without them having to know the nomenclature of the command line search. Users can add fields by clicking on “+ Field”, select specific search fields, select comparison or proximity operators, group search fields with different Boolean operators by clicking on “-> Group” and select the desired Boolean operators. If users open advanced search without search terms, the system will display a default query-builder template containing the main searchable fields.
Advanced search queries are synchronized with the smart search queries. So, when users enter search terms in the smart search, the advanced search will automatically build a query representation corresponding to the smart search query and vice versa. If users click on the “Reset” button, the query will be deleted and the default advanced search template will be displayed again.
The search can be narrowed down by using the filters function, i.e. by activating the “Filters” toggle in the main toolbar and selecting the desired filters. Search results can be filtered according to countries, languages, publication date, priority date, IPC main groups, IPC subgroups, CPC main groups, CPC subgroups, CPC assigning offices, applicants, inventors, applicants’ country and inventors’ country, on family or publication level, depending on the filter category and/or the intended use. It is easy to add selected filters to the search statement. Users can apply filters with the OR logic when applying different filter items of the same category simultaneously, or with the AND logic when applied consecutively.
Espacenet allows users to retrieve patent documents based on both International Patent Classification (IPC) and Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) and CPC C-sets. Espacenet is the place to browse the CPC scheme. Since the introduction of CPC international (CPCI), the proximity search in Espacenet also allows users to specify the assigning authority.
Espacenet groups the search results by simple families, whereby only a representative member of the family is shown in the result list.
The whole simple family is visible under “Published as” in “Bibliographic data”.
Data on the simple patent family and INPADOC (extended) family for each search result is displayed in the document pane.
More details on the definition of simple and extended families can be found on the EPO’s website at epo.org.
Search results are displayed in the result list in text format by default (title, patent number, publication date, applicant name, earliest priority date, earliest publication date and abstract snippet). They can also be displayed as text and thumbnails, compact list or drawings only.
Results are sorted by default by relevance, according to the weighted frequency of keywords in the search query. They can also be sorted by publication date and priority date.
The searched terms are highlighted in the result list and document pane.
Users can download, print or share the result list.
Individual results can be selected for further display, download, print or addition to a user folder named “My patents”. Users access these options via the vertical three dots symbol in the list handling bar (top right of the results area). Users can also add results to “My patents” by clicking on the star in the document pane.
Many translated titles and abstracts are made available in English in addition to the texts in original language.
Whenever available, Espacenet provides the following information in the document pane for each result: bibliographic data, character-coded description, character-coded claims, drawings, original document, citations, legal events and patent family information. You can display enlarged views of the original document and drawings in pop-ups by clicking on the respective original document or drawing in the document pane.
Many machine-translated descriptions and claims in English are made available in the document pane in addition to the texts in original language.
Users can download the description, claims, original document, citations, legal events and patent family and print the bibliographic data via the vertical three dots symbol at the top right of the document pane.
Users can share the URLs of patent documents displayed in the document pane via the vertical three dots symbol at the top right of the document pane.
Users can machine translate abstracts, descriptions and claims in the document pane using Patent Translate from and to English from 31 languages, including all official languages of the EPO’s member states, as well as Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian.
Search results are analyzed in Espacenet both statistically and graphically when users activate the “Filters” toggle in the main toolbar. Search results are grouped according to the most frequent countries, languages, publication date, priority date, IPC main groups, IPC subgroups, CPC main groups, CPC subgroups, CPC assigning offices, applicants, inventors, applicants’ country and inventors’ country, and display the corresponding number of results for each. If preferred, users can display charts instead, by clicking on the graph icon at the top right of the filters area.
Users can download Excel tables that provide a statistical analysis of the search results, as displayed in the filters area, via the vertical three dots symbol at the top right of the filters area.
Changes in Global Dossiers of EP and CN patent documents of a patent family can be monitored via an RSS feed under the “Patent family” tab > “INPADOC family” tab.
Users can download the first 500 results in Espacenet in xlsx or csv format (downloaded file contains the title, inventor names, applicant names, publication number, priority date, IPC, CPC, publication date, earliest publication date and family ID number) and the first 100 front pages in pdf format via the vertical three dots symbol located in the list handling bar at the top right of the results area.
Users can download the description (docx), claims (docx), original document (pdf), citations (xlsx), legal events (xlsx), patent family (xlsx) (simple and INPADOC (extended)) and the latest legal events for the whole INPADOC family (xlsx) via the vertical three dots symbol at the top right of the document pane.
Users can download Excel tables that provide a statistical analysis of the search results, as displayed in the filters area, via the vertical three dots symbol at the top right of the filters area.
Espacenet includes references to non-patent literature (NPL).
Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT can be used in Espacenet to combine terms in the search query.
Users can also search using proximity operators: prox/distance<x to limit the distance between terms combined with the operators in any order; prox/distance<x/ordered to limit the distance in the written order; prox/ordered to search the exact expression (same effect as putting the terms between quotes); prox/unit=sentence to search the terms in the same sentence; and prox/unit=paragraph to search the terms in the same paragraph.
Anti-proximity can be simulated by using e.g. the AND operator between the terms in combination with the NOT operator and the proximity operator.
Comparison operators can also be used: “all” to retrieve documents containing all terms in any order when used between a field identifier and terms entered within quotes (same effect as the AND operator between terms); “any” to retrieve documents containing any terms in any order when used between a field identifier and terms entered within quotes (same effect as the OR operator between terms); as well as >, >=, <, <= and “within” to be used with a date-related field identifier to specify periods of time.
The wildcard * stands for a string of characters of any length.
The wildcard ? stands for zero characters or one character.
The wildcard # stands for exactly one character.
At least three alphanumeric characters must precede a * symbol and at least two alphanumeric characters must precede a ? or # symbol.
If two alphanumeric characters precede a ? or # symbol, then a maximum of three truncation symbols is allowed.
If three or more alphanumeric characters precede a ? or # symbol, then a maximum of seven truncation symbols is allowed.