EPO - Discussion forums

Dear all,

I've got a question regarding patents filed in Chinese. While these patents show up in the results list, fields such as "Applicant", "Citations" ... stay blank. It seems like the database cannot properly process the Chinese language. Even when exporting the results list the fields stay empty. Is there any way to solve this problem?

Thanks in advance.

Dear All,

Chinese publications are usually made available in our worldwide bibliographic data collection (known as DOCDB, input used by GPI and other Patent Information products) in two steps (i.e. two deliveries from the Chinese Patent Office): step #1 with applicant names in Chinese language and step #2 (e.g. three month after step #1) with applicant names in Latin character set.
GPI uses applicant names in original format (step #1) and names in the so-called DOCDB format which is the outcome of a standardisation process of the names provided in step #2.
GPI result list content: the column “Applicant” contains only the names in DOCDB format when available.
GPI document content: the field “Applicant” contains names in DOCDB format or names in original format when the names in DOCDB format are not available.
We will evaluate whether the GPI result list could include the names in original format when the names in DOCDB format are not available.
For your information, names in Asian languages might be searchable in a future version of GPI.

For citations we have in DOCDB/GPI what we get from Patent Offices. For example, we currently have approximately 1 million CN A publications published in 2017 (puc=cn and pud=2017 and puk=A), and approximately 20.000 have citation data (puc=cn and pud=2017 and puk=A and cit=*).

Best regards,

Patrick