What to do if Espacenet rejects your IP address?

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EPO / Espacenet helpdesk
Site Admin
Posts: 327
Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2003 8:04 am

What to do if Espacenet rejects your IP address?

Post by EPO / Espacenet helpdesk » Thu Dec 10, 2015 12:08 pm

In order to make access to Espacenet fair for all users, we have recently implemented some technical measures to regulate excessive use of the system. Depending on how you are searching in Espacenet, you may receive one of two error messages.

Error message: Some of the requests from this IP are seen as originating from automated tools

This could be due to :
1. Excessive use of excel or other deep linking from lists or in-house tools.
Solution: When using internal lists for example, excel, we suggest you click on the link to the result list as shown below rather than accessing documents via their individual hyperlinks:
Espacenet excel results list.jpg
Espacenet excel results list.jpg (135.34 KiB) Viewed 5122 times
2. Espacenet cookies are disabled
Solution: Please ensure that cookies are enabled. If cookies are blocked from this screen, MS Office and other browsers will eventually trigger Robot Abuse. This could be just one person in an organisation
Espacenet cookies.jpg
Espacenet cookies.jpg (70.89 KiB) Viewed 5122 times
.

3. You are using automated tools that are accessing Espacenet without a session.
Solution: Please refrain from using all automated tools or third party software. Direct access to the data by any automated means, such as a macro, will cause rejection messages to be sent. In order to avoid rejections in future – you may like to check whether our Open Patent Services (OPS) could be an alternative tool for your data retrieval. Open Patent Services (OPS) provide web services for machine-to-machine queries that deliver production stable patent data from the EPO. For more information, please see the dedicated: OPS FAQs .

Error message: The Espacenet application has found that requests from your IP address may be in violation of our fair use charter

This could be because of:
1. Excessive data retrieval or document downloads
Solution: If our systems have detected that you have been loading too much data or documents in a short period of time, your IP address will be blocked for 24 hours and released automatically.

2. There are numerous users behind the IP address
Solution: Please click on contact us in the error message and let us know the number of potential Espacenet users in your company.

Kind regards,

Your Patent Information User Support Team


psorsdahl
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Sep 12, 2016 8:36 pm

Re: What to do if Espacenet rejects your IP address?

Post by psorsdahl » Mon Sep 12, 2016 8:47 pm

Hi,

I am currently busy mapping suitable CPC-classes for a client involved in electromobility and ran into your "rejected IP-address"-message.

As far as I know I do not use automated tools, so that cannot be the reason for the rejection.
Is there a limit for the number of requests made per minute, or is there a way to avoid this problem?
(In other words; what defines "excessive use"?)

Best regards,
Petter Sörsdahl


EPO / Espacenet helpdesk
Site Admin
Posts: 327
Joined: Fri Aug 08, 2003 8:04 am

Re: What to do if Espacenet rejects your IP address?

Post by EPO / Espacenet helpdesk » Tue Sep 13, 2016 12:03 pm

Dear Petter,

I would suggest you to send a short e-mail indicating your IP address (e.g. through Google "What is my IP address") and a screen shot or URL of the message you get at the following e-mail address :
patentinformation@epo.org

Our IT expert will then investigate the nature of the problem.
Many thanks in advance.
Kind regards,

PIUS User Support Team
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Patent Information User Support Coordination and Tools
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