EPO - Discussion forums

When exporting patents of the result list via the download menu, there is a limit of 500 max. results.
I thought this is a limitation from ESPACENET not to download more than 500 at once, but it seems that the download formular does not let me write a number higher than 500, for example, to tell espacenet to download document 501 to 510 seems impossible. Is that intended that way?
Best regards
Björn

The download function uses a lot of resources in the background so that for now this limit applies. Espacenet is not meant for downloading large data sets, for which the OPS service would be more suitable and our subscription and bulk data products.
A workaround for a bit larger lists may be to sort according to dates (e.g. publication date) and adapt the query or filtering with the right time range: i.e. by changing the cut-off date to the last document in the downloaded list. You find in the downloaded file in the last column the Family number to de-duplicate family members in your consolidated Excel list, if necessary.
We understand that the system limits have an effect on the usability, but for now they are necessary to protect our system.

Thanks for the quick reply.
I understand that Espacenet is not meant to be a tool for mass downloading (although similar free tools like patentscope allows up to 10.000 documents to be exported), but when you say that you do not allow it for performance reasons, I do not understand the logic why is not possible to export in several/separate downloads (e.g. for 1500 results: 3 downloads generating 3 xls files with 500 docs ).
Best regards
Björn

PS Reg the EPO OPS service: this is useful for developers but not for end users.

Thank you for this suggestion, which will be taken into account in our analysis of user needs, feasibility and resources required for possible future implementations.