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Coverage of the worldwide database
The worldwide database enables you to search for information about published patent applications from over 70 different countries and regions.
It is based on the PCT minimum documentation
, which is defined by WIPO
as the minimum requirement for patent collections used to search for prior-art documents for the purpose of assessing novelty and inventiveness. The EPO has expanded the coverage of its internal database far beyond the PCT minimum documentation to include data from other countries and other time periods. Moreover, additional information, such as ECLA symbols and references to cited documents
, is added to other fields by examiners in the course of their work.
In January 2004, esp@cenet® held data on 45 million patents from 71 countries. A total of 24.2 million of these patents have a title, while 18.3 million have an ECLA class and 7.1 million an abstract in English.
The following table gives an overview of the availability of the PCT minimum documentation in the worldwide database:
|
Country
|
Facsimiles from
|
Abstracts from
|
European Classification
|
| CH |
1888, from CH1 onwards |
1970 |
1920 |
| DE |
1877, from DE1 onwards |
1970 |
1877, from DE1 onwards |
| EP |
1978 |
1978 |
1978 |
| FR |
1920 |
1970 |
1902 |
| GB |
1920 |
1918 |
1909 |
| US |
1836, from US1 onwards |
1970 |
1920 |
| WO |
1978 |
1978 |
1978 |
Bibliographic coverage
Click here
for details of bibliographic data coverage.
Abstract coverage
Click here
for details of English abstracts coverage.
Facsimile coverage and classification
Click here
for details of facsimile and ECLA classification coverage.
Our collection now also includes 1.5 million facsimiles of Japanese utility models, 1 million facsimiles of Australian patents and over 207 000 Russian patents from 1970 onwards.
For more information on patent searching, see the following pages:
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