New OPS terms of use and Fair use charter from 2018 on

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EPO / OPS Support
Posts: 1298
Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:32 pm

New OPS terms of use and Fair use charter from 2018 on

Post by EPO / OPS Support » Wed Oct 18, 2017 2:30 pm

Dear users,

We would like to draw your attention again to the fact that our OPS Terms and conditions will change as of 1 January 2018 and with that our testing phase for paying account holders will be concluded. Please see new terms here: https://www.epo.org/searching-for-paten ... html#tab-2

As of January 2018, OPS “paying” accounts are subjected to the payment of an annual subscription (flat rate fee). OPS subscriptions are valid from January to December with option to prolong/cancel annually. Subscribers to OPS will still be submitted to the same limitations as those users who registered to a “non-paying“ account, in particular to the Fair use conditions, see http://www.epo.org/searching-for-paten ... -use.html . However, additionally they will be able to download data above the free threshold as indicated in the Fair use charter.

We will also updated our Fair use charter and as of 2018 on all registered users with “non-paying” access will benefit from the increase of the free threshold from 2,5 GB/week to 3,5 GB/week. OPS will still continue to be available free of charge for registered users having a “non-paying” account.

From 2018 on, our OPS users have two different account options to choose from:
- registered “paying” usage , subjected to flat rate annual fee
- registered “non-paying” usage , free-of-charge

Anonymous access was already removed with the introduction of our production version OPS 3.2 and is also no longer not possible for testing our Developers area.

The annual subscription price is specified in the brochure "EPO Patent Information Products and Services – Price list 2018”www.epo.org/service-support/ordering.html

We will update information on OPS website only in December 2017, since all the changes really only apply as of January 2018.

For any information feel free to contact us anytime via email (see Contact information): https://www.epo.org/searching-for-paten ... tml#tab-2

OPS support


Mike_k43
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: New OPS terms of use and Fair use charter from 2018 on

Post by Mike_k43 » Wed Nov 08, 2017 9:09 am

Dear OPS Support,

I have a question concerning Fair Use. We have now implemented our tool to download PDF documents from OPS. We currently use OAuth2 authentication, but (for testing purposes) with a non-paying account. The consequence is that, after downloading about 30 documents, you will receive the "403 Forbidden" message, indicating that you exceeded your quota, and you will be blocked for the rest of the week.

In productive use the tool might be used to download large amounts of PDF docs (say, several hundred or even more than a thousand). If we upgraded our account to paying, what would happen:
a) Concerning the Oauth2 authentication token: Would it still expire about 20 minutes after requesting it?
b) Would we be allowed to download such large amounts of documents, without being blocked?

Mike_k43


Mike_k43
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: New OPS terms of use and Fair use charter from 2018 on

Post by Mike_k43 » Fri Nov 17, 2017 5:03 pm

Dear OPS Support,

I have not yet received Feedback concerning my below questions. The answers thereto are not in the communications published by EPO concerning OAuth2 nor in the OPS 3.2 Manual.

mike_k43


EPO / OPS Support
Posts: 1298
Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:32 pm

Re: New OPS terms of use and Fair use charter from 2018 on

Post by EPO / OPS Support » Mon Nov 20, 2017 8:11 am

Hi,

I am sorry, we didn't see your notices before.

Please refer again to OPS Fair use charter where is clearly stated that OPS is not meant for bulk downloading, you can get what we call "a reasonable amount of data" and if you need more, like entire collections of worldwide patents or even entire collection of EP's you need to either buy those in a form of a product or use multiple web service from different offices to get all the data you want to have in your database.

Fair use charter: https://www.epo.org/searching-for-paten ... r-use.html

OPS has same limitations (URL throttling (for image data 200 SPM (searches per minute if the system is not too busy) as well as bandwidth (450 MB per hour)). If you are only getting 30 documents then you are either too quick, not adjusting to throttling when it changes or you are only using testing Console. That still does not mean that you can load thousands of documents but you should be able to load more then what you wrote.
The only difference between paying and non-paying is that non-paying get only 2,5 GB data per week ( soon to be 3,5 GB) and paying get more then that but under same conditions than non-paying.

Also, please be so kind and if you need quick reply write us an email. Forum is not always looked at, but Emails we become and process right away.

OPS support


Mike_k43
Posts: 52
Joined: Fri Jan 06, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: New OPS terms of use and Fair use charter from 2018 on

Post by Mike_k43 » Mon Nov 20, 2017 10:57 am

Dear OPS Support,

Maybe I did not formulate my two questions precisely enought, so I will reformulate them:
a) If we have a "paying" account, will the OAuth2 token still expire about 20 minutes after requesting it? This is a question with yes/no answer.
b) If we have a "paying" account, will there still be a Limit on downloaded data (e.g. in Gigabytes per week/session)? What you call "a reasonable amount of data" is not a clear answer to this question. From the Manuals and docs one can only infer that there will be a 60EUR/2.5 Gigabyte Charge, besides an annual flat fee.

mike_k43


EPO / OPS Support
Posts: 1298
Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:32 pm

Re: New OPS terms of use and Fair use charter from 2018 on

Post by EPO / OPS Support » Mon Nov 20, 2017 11:31 am

Hi,
I actually did reply exactly at what you ask so let me try again. The only change between paying and non paying is amount of data which should mean that anything else is exactly the same, so also token expiry duration.

My reply is as clear as it can be, I can not give you anything more detailed because as you know, OPS services offer many different kind of services and amount of data does differ from one service to another. And another thing that I thing I was clear about is that OPS is no bulk downloading tool - for that we offer paying data (see raw data products on the website). I know that other offices might have bulk download option, but we only have that in a form of a raw data product and even that not for all data available in OPS.

Reference that you found about 60 (actually its 65 EUR) is reference to year 2017 (which is mentioned on the website because this still is year 2017). But since the OPS was still in a testing phase we didn't charge to anyone those 65 Euro per GB.

In 2018, only yearly subscription of 2800 EUR per year as stated in EPO's price list and email that all paying have received will be charged. Email stated all that and if for some reason you didn't get it or the reminder then write to me to patentdata inbox and I will send you that email again.

Regards,
OPS support


gerben
Posts: 46
Joined: Tue Feb 27, 2007 10:29 am
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: New OPS terms of use and Fair use charter from 2018 on

Post by gerben » Tue May 01, 2018 7:47 am

Dear OPS support,

The current version of the manual (january 2018 version) still reports 2.5G as current max week volume on page 39. According to this announcement (october 2017), this should be 3.5G. It would be nice if the manual would be adjusted to report this, but it will be outdated again with the next change. I assume there is a webpage that can be considered as the authoritative reference for these fair use parameters, perhaps it would be wise to add a link to this webpage in the manual to refer users/developers to the current values for the fair use parameters.
This saves your developers time to recheck the manual with every change and it gives users/developers the certainty that they are working with the true current values.

regards,
Gerben


EPO / OPS Support
Posts: 1298
Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:32 pm

Re: New OPS terms of use and Fair use charter from 2018 on

Post by EPO / OPS Support » Wed May 02, 2018 8:51 am

Hi,

It's 4 GB at the moment and we did ask the team in charge to remove all references from the manual so that this kind of updates get to be obsolete in the future.

Regards,
Vesna for OPS


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