Searching SPCs with EPO Patent Information products

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EPO / Innovation Networks
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Joined: Wed Nov 12, 2014 3:36 pm

Searching SPCs with EPO Patent Information products

Post by EPO / Innovation Networks » Wed Oct 21, 2020 2:23 pm

There are two EPO products offering Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) search: Global Patent Index (GPI) and PATSTAT Online – both products use the EPO worldwide legal event collection. Both products require a subscription.

One-month free trials can be requested at:

GPI: https://www.epo.org/searching-for-paten ... t/gpi.html

PATSTAT Online: https://www.epo.org/searching-for-paten ... tstat.html

On these web pages you will also find user manuals.

For example, in GPI, SPC information can be searched for a given patent proprietor using the following query:

EVDE = SPC or "SUPPLEMENTARY PROTECTION CERTIFICATE" and APP or EVOW = BASF or BAYER

Query meaning: I want to retrieve patent documents where the legal event information includes at least one event about SPC (criterion EVDE “event description”) for the companies I am interested in (criterion APP “applicant/proprietor” - combined with EVOW “owner mentioned in the event record” to ensure that you also retrieve documents where the initial proprietor may no longer be the owner, for example in the case of a change of ownership).

See the example of a document in the search result window, bibliographic data on the left-hand side, legal events on the right-hand side:
GPI Search result window.png
(Click to enlarge)

And the example of customisable search result list downloaded from GPI in Excel format:
ResultListExcelDownload .png
(Click to enlarge)

Documents in GPI, i.e. bibliographic data with or without legal events, can also be downloaded in PDF or ODT format.
Kind regards,

The Innovation Networks Team


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