The “patented” seal signifies unique ideas and protects them from product piracy. The European Patent Office (EPO) makes patenting procedures transparent. Anyone can use the online European Patent Register to find out about the progress of all the current patent applications being processed by the European Patent Office and their legal status. Following the release of the new version in December 2013, the Patent Office is demonstrating how the Patent Register works at CeBIT 2014.
The European Patent Register contains all publically available information on European patent applications at the various stages in the patenting procedure. All correspondence between the EPO and patent agents, from registration through to objections, is therefore transparent. The volumes of data involved are huge – in 2013 alone, more than 265,000 applications for patents were submitted to the EPO. What’s new to the Patent Register? In January 2014, Italy and Turkey joined the list of countries whose patenting procedures can be searched using deep links. Users of the register can now call up the legal and procedural status of European patents in 27 countries – all at the click of a mouse.
Other topics covered at the trade fair will include “Espacenet” – the information portal covering inventions and technical developments from 1836 until the present day. The portal gives users the opportunity to conduct research for free in a database containing more than 80 million patent documents from all over the world. What’s more, the EPO and Google have teamed up to produce Patent Translate, an optimized translation service for patent documents.
