Report:Esp@cenet/Major Recent Updates

Major Recent Updates

See the Intellogist update policies for more information.

January 2010

In the January 2010 issue of Patent Information News, the EPO announced several upcoming changes to the esp@cenet service. At this time, details on these changes are slim, and the anticipated availability date is the "beginning of 2010." For the current announcement, please see the EPO Patent Information News at http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/D9F10E8571A5217AC125768E0058E620/$File/Patentinfo_News_0904_en.pdf.

• Improved Help file navigation
• Default search options setting to "Worldwide" database
• "A0" documents will be displayed instead of the corresponding PCT document for Euro-PCT publications
• Full text EP and WO search in German, French, and English, the three official languages
• Search-term highlighting in full text
• A sort function for all lists
• "Improved pagination" and navigation within lists
• Classification search results will include representative images
• The capability to "analyze the patent claims as filed and and visualize the dependent and independent claims." Based on the graphic example in the announcement, this feature will take the form of a branching tree that describes the relationship between claims.
• Display features for forward and backward citations
• More search terms per field
• SmartSearch field identifiers will be "redesigned."

This update has occurred since our last review. During our next scheduled update, this article will be revised to include a description of the newly added content and features. In late January of 2010, many of these enhancements appear to have been implemented in esp@cenet, including the following:

• The esp@cenet search forms appear to now be able to accept more than four search terms at one time. Users can press "CTRL + enter" to expand search form text boxes further. Note: The esp@cenet help file had not yet been updated to state that more search terms were acceptable as of January 27, 2010.

• Search terms are now highlighted in search results.

• Search results can be sorted by priority date, inventor, applicant, ECLA code and upload date.

• "Improved pagination" for original document images has been added to the interface, allowing users to click through to the next page of the document, rather than having to scroll downward within the Adobe viewing window.

• Esp@cenet can now search through the full text of European (EP) and Patent Cooperation Treaty (WO/PCT) documents from its collection. Full text search can be conducted in English, French or German. Previously, this full text information could be displayed, but was not searchable.

• The capability to "analyze the patent claims as filed and and visualize the dependent and independent claims" has been added. This feature is activated by choosing the "claims tree" option when viewing the "claims" tab of an esp@cenet result. The feature generates a "branching tree" display that describes the relationship between claims.

• The SmartSearch field identifiers have been re-designed (a complete list is available from the epo help index). The field also supports proximity operators.

June 2009

According to the June 2009 issue of Patent Information News, esp@cenet is loading or re-loading over 6 million US assignment records into its legal status database. According to the bulletin:

The EPO is currently in the process of loading over six million assignment records into its legal status database. When complete, the database will cover US assignments dating back to 1981. The most recent events are taken from the "US assign" DVD issued by the USPTO in January 2009. Further issues will be used for maintaining the frontfile. The EPO's databases have included US assignment data in the past, but the Office identified a systematic problem which led to records being corrupted. As a result, the EPO's data on US assignments were removed from the legal status database (i.e. from esp@cenet and OPS) in late January 2009.

Michael White of The Patent Librarian's Notebook adds that this reload probably includes all the data available on the USPTO's web assignment database as well as Cassis ASSIGN, although he notes that both give the earlier start date of August 1980.

More information is available at The Patent Librarian's Notebook blog, at http://patentlibrarian.blogspot.com/2009/08/us-assignment-data-in-espacnet.html, and in the Patent Information News issue 2/2009, at http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/A75DA91ADC3DCEE5C12575D0003E6F39/$File/Patentinfo_News_0902_en.pdf.

October 2008 Updates

New features introduced in October 2008 include several updates that were promised in the April 2008 announcement of forthcoming features (described in the next section). New October 2008 enhancements include:

• Extended "my patents" list - the saved results list in esp@cenet, called the "my patents" list, has been extended from 20 to 100 patent documents.
• Larger page limits on document downloads - Previously, users could download entire PDF patent facsimile images only if the document had 50 or fewer pages. This update has extended the limit to 500 pages for EP patent documents, and 250 pages for any other document. For more information, see the Downloads section.
• CSV spreadsheet exports - esp@cenet now allows users to export certain bibliographic data fields for each esp@cenet search hit into a CSV format spreadsheet. Up to 30 records can be exported at one time. See the Export Functions section for more information.
• New Smart Search form - became accessible from ep.espacenet.com.

A description of the new enhancements, including the SmartSearch feature, is included in the fourth 2008 issue of the EPO's quarterly Patent Information News publication, at http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/FA531BAA63562343C12575210050CD48/$File/Patentinfo_News_0804_en.pdf.

April 2008: Forthcoming Updates Announced

Several major enhancements were announced in April 2008, and were expected to take place by the end of 2008,^[1] including:

• An increase in the number of documents that can be stored in the "My patents" list (see the Saving Results section for more information)
• Exportable hit lists (see Export Functions for more information)
• Relaxation of the page limit for PDF patent copy downloads (see Downloads for more information)
• Full-text searches for patent documentation in English, French and German (see Full Text Coverage for more information)
• Single search fields accepting multiple search criteria
• Date range searches (see The Search Forms for more information on these two points)
• Highlighting of search terms (see Viewing Individual Records for more information)

A complete timeline of the evolution of esp@cenet was published in September of 2008 in honor of esp@cenet's 10th birthday. This overview can be found in the third 2008 issue of the EPO's quarterly Patent Information News publication. ^[2] An interactive web version of the timeline can be found at http://ep.espacenet.com/timeline/timeline.html.

Sources

1. ↑ "EPO Data News." Patent Information News, Vol 01/08: page 10 (April 2008), http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/D5E8D2898C6D2858C1257417003FA136/$File/Patentinfo_news_0801_en.pdf. Accessed July 24, 2008.
2. ↑ "1998-2008: Celebrating 10 Years of esp@cenet." Patent Information News, Vol 03/08: page 9 (September 2008). http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/4A49D023F0EE7018C12574D3002449F8/$File/Patentinfo_News_0803_en.pdf. Accessed September 29, 2008.