Full-text descriptions and claims are currently available from far fewer authorities via OPS than via espacenet (https://www.epo.org/searching-for-paten ... tml#faq-74).
Although I understand that there may be copyright issues or licensing costs associated with providing full-text data from certain authorities, this can limit the usefulness of the OPS service.
Since there are no restrictions on use of US full-text data, as far as I am aware, it is surprising that this data is made available via espacenet but not via OPS.
For other major authorities, such as CN, JP, KR and DE publications, I would be interested to know why full-text data is not made available via OPS. If additional licensing costs were involved, perhaps it would be possible to provide this data via OPS using a different pricing model.
keywords: china japan korea germany usa chinese japanese korean german sipo jpo kipo dpma uspto
Full-text descriptions and claims
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EPO / OPS Support
- Posts: 1298
- Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:32 pm
Re: Full-text descriptions and claims
Hi,
Although no one would be happier than us who are in charge of OPS to get all same coverage than Espacenet we are also aware that at this moment this is just not possible.
Please remember that the EPO is not a commercial patent information provider, we do not pay for foreign data collections so we are entirely dependent on rules and conditions that offices that offer their data to us are prescribing. We are also not here to be a competitors of commercial patent information database providers worldwide. We have to take what we get and when we get it and we are not in a position to make demands as a paying data user potentially could. We fully understand your concerns and we are in constant contact with all stakeholders worldwide to get more collections that we are allowed to offer as either bulk download products or via a web service.
On the other hand, the added value in using a web service like OPS is that anyone building a database or search engine is free to combine as many different data sources as they would like and they are not obliged to use only one database. Not what you want, but it still is an option.
Please, also note that data in Espacenet is also not available for loading and/or linking to other databases, this data is only available for manual searches on our website and this is defined in those same conditions already mentioned before. Therefore taking full-text in character-coded form from Espacenet and loading it to your database is also not allowed and is a clear breach of both Fair use charter and Terms and conditions of use for the website of the European Patent Office.
Please also know that we are really doing the best we possibly can to add as many as possible data collections to OPS.
I appreciate your forum entry a lot, it's good for us to have a proof that this is a burning topic for our users for quite some time now and maybe such requests as yours will help us get more collections in the future.
Regards,
OPS support
Although no one would be happier than us who are in charge of OPS to get all same coverage than Espacenet we are also aware that at this moment this is just not possible.
Please remember that the EPO is not a commercial patent information provider, we do not pay for foreign data collections so we are entirely dependent on rules and conditions that offices that offer their data to us are prescribing. We are also not here to be a competitors of commercial patent information database providers worldwide. We have to take what we get and when we get it and we are not in a position to make demands as a paying data user potentially could. We fully understand your concerns and we are in constant contact with all stakeholders worldwide to get more collections that we are allowed to offer as either bulk download products or via a web service.
On the other hand, the added value in using a web service like OPS is that anyone building a database or search engine is free to combine as many different data sources as they would like and they are not obliged to use only one database. Not what you want, but it still is an option.
Please, also note that data in Espacenet is also not available for loading and/or linking to other databases, this data is only available for manual searches on our website and this is defined in those same conditions already mentioned before. Therefore taking full-text in character-coded form from Espacenet and loading it to your database is also not allowed and is a clear breach of both Fair use charter and Terms and conditions of use for the website of the European Patent Office.
Please also know that we are really doing the best we possibly can to add as many as possible data collections to OPS.
I appreciate your forum entry a lot, it's good for us to have a proof that this is a burning topic for our users for quite some time now and maybe such requests as yours will help us get more collections in the future.
Regards,
OPS support