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Licence regarding Full text data

Posted: Sun Oct 09, 2016 9:25 pm
by patentmaster
Hi,

There are full text data available from OPS (e.g. GB Claims and Description) and I would like to ask if there are any separate licensing restrictions apart from the T&C's of the OPS (https://developers.epo.org/sites/defaul ... 022014.pdf) and if anyone can freely use such full text data, after processing the data and not the data as such provided by the OPS. Do the same rules apply to pdf documents as well, downloaded through OPS? For example, GB pdf's are subject to crown copyright.

I've also noticed that some patents are non-existent such as EP268816; have these patents never been issued or is this some error in the EPO database?

Thanks

Re: Licence regarding Full text data

Posted: Mon Oct 10, 2016 12:15 pm
by EPO / OPS Support
Hi,

For OPS, the Terms and Conditions mentioned in your post are enough, you don't need any other license agreement. You can use all data received via OPS but as you mention yourself you need to enrich or make it a part of your product or service first.

As far as EP publications, you have to compare it against EPO's authority file available here: https://www.epo.org/searching-for-paten ... -file.html

The EP number mentioned below is marked with U which means "unknown publication number" and our Authority file technical documentation states that during the compilation of the authority file a list of unknown publication numbers issued before 1991 have been found. It is expected that these publication numbers have been withdrawn. The EPO is working on proofing the withdrawal for each case manually and update the authority file accordingly as soon as possible.

As the last version of the AF still labels this number with U we expect that the status of this publication was not yet manually reviewed but that can change by the time when the next AF will be published.


I hope this helps,

OPS support