EPO - Discussion forums

Dear Espacenet Team,

I have been very happy with your service for many years, thanks.

However, in recent weeks, I noticed an increase in new Chinese & Japanese patent applications that are listed without applicants & inventors in Espacenet & EPO OPS, for example:

https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publica ... B=&locale=

Because we work in the battery field, it is very important for us to be aware of recent patent filings in China & Japan by specific applicants. Our statistics become distorted if applicants/investors are missing for some patent families for extended amounts of time. I was wondering if you plan to soon get back to the original situation in which applicants & inventors are included in Mandarin or Japanese as soon as the patent is added to your database, or if we have to assume that in the future, applicants/inventors will not be available for more than one month after the patent publication date?

Many thanks in advance for your response and with kind regards,

Pirmin

Hi,

Translated names (where available) are always added to the database (we have one that feeds all tools, including OPS and both Espacenets) later then biblio data. We have to wait for Asian offices to deliver translated names first. It can take 1 to 3 months, depending on the office for names to appear. And in cases where they don't then you can always see if you have simple patent family available and take the name of a simple family member. This has never changed, the only thing that is changing is that offices need less and less time to provide us with translated data. It used to be around 4-5 months . The document you are linking is from 1 of November and clearly cannot have any translations yet because its just too new. Even Chinese office can only produce translation after the document gets published.
Please don't forget that we are no commercial data provider, we are patent office that offers same data set as available to our examiners and we load data as we get it and the way we get it from other offices.

Regards
Vesna for OPS support

Dear Vesna,

Many thanks for your detailed reply.

I'm sorry that I was not clear. I was referring to untranslated applicants in Mandarin, Japanese & Korean, which do not seem to be available any more on Espacenet / EPO OPS, e.g. in
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publica ... B=&locale=

Until mid-October, a typical listing looked like this with TOYOTA MOTOR CO LTD listed with its Japanese name: トヨタ自動車株式会社:
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publica ... B=&locale=

If the applicant name is available in the original language, it is usually easy to extract a translation from Espacenet / EPO OPS, for example the translation pair above:

https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publica ... 60A1&KC=A1

For this reason, up to 6 weeks ago, we were able to keep track of most battery patent applicants from East Asia immediately upon publication even though the English translation was not yet available.

Of course I respect EPO has its own priorities and we are not the primary stakeholder, although EPO OPS has been extremely helpful for us. As a user, I'd still like to respectfully suggest to please continue including applicant original names as soon as a patent is listed in Espacenet, and perhaps to consider producing automatic translations based on applicant translation pairs that are already included in your database.

Many thanks for your consideration and with kind regards,

Pirmin

Hi Pirmin,

Oh, I see what you mean, you are correct, In Japanese PCT's we now have original name in English (which is a part of JP PCT's so it does come from original filling, but this was not what we used to have as Original before). But you would prefer to have real original back, correct?

And in national fillings no name at all

I need to ask around what the reason might be. I will reply to this post once I get some new information.

Thank you to pointing our attention to this, we value that very much. If you have similar issues you can always send them to patentdata(at) epo.org directly as well.

Regards,
Vesna for OPS and bulk data at the EPO

Hi Visna,

Many thanks for your quick response & valuable efforts Yes, to have the original applicant names in East Asian characters would be great like it was made available until a few weeks ago (labeled in the EPO OPS data structure: original), alongside English translations once they become available (labeled in the EPO OPS data structure: epodoc).

Many thanks again and with kind regards,

Pirmin

Hi,

I am not sure if you have noticed, but we are again loading names in a format as before (Original names in language as on publication and not English).

We are now also preparing to re-load and fix last 7 weeks of data where original language was English.

Thank you again for informing us about this

Vesna for Patent Data and OPS

Dear Vesna,

Many, many thanks to you and the data team for being very responsive about this question Yes, we have observed that recent patents (e.g. published on December 13th by Toyota Motor, 丰田自动车株式会社) are now again available with the applicant in the original language. It is very helpful for us.

Many thanks in advance also for re-loading the last 7 weeks of data.

Happy holidays and with kind regards,

Pirmin

Glad to help and thank you for informing us in a first place.

Happy holidays to you as well

Vesna for Patent Data and OPS support