Coverage of documents

[Burkhard]

Hi,

1) according to Marketing, Espacenet offers free access to more than 90 million patent documents worldwide.
This statment strongly implies that there are 90 M searchable patent documents in Espacenet, which is definitely wrong.
There are only ~72 M searchable patent docs in Espacenet at stage.
Maybe the 90 M number could be clarrified, as there are always misinterpretations on that.

2) Coverage of worldwide db is very outdated at the moment (2011).
When is an updated Version expected?


Thanks

[EPO / Innovation Networks]

Hi Burkhard,

We promote the Espacenet service as a tool to gain “Free access to 90 million patent documents worldwide”.

EPODOC, the database behind Espacenet contains ~72 million patent applications. Patent applications can have more than one publication (their family members), so the total number of patent publications or documents in EPODOC is just slightly under 90 million.

Indeed the Global Patent Data Coverage document is out of date. A much more user-friendly and html based coverage overview is currently in the test phase. We hope to be able to release it in the coming weeks.

We decided to leave the old and out-of-date version on-line so that users could at least gain an overview of the type of publication available from around the world.

I hope this clarifies your queries.

Kind regards,


Lisa McDonald-Maier

Head Patent Information User Support