http://worldwide.espacenet.com/

EspaceNet has just been upgraded, access is provided at http://worldwide.espacenet.com/ this link allows access to the EPO's worldwide database which covers most material.

Each country provides a further database covering their own patents. This database is believed to cover only TWO YEARS worth of data.

The EPO's EspaceNet site provides the following full text patent documents on-line.

EspaceNet provides a database which covers Japanese patent applications made by Japanese applicants. Again this is at http://worldwide.espacenet.com/

Images from JP 48025001 (April 1974)
Bibliographic Information from JP 51127546 (November 1976)
Bibliographic Information and first page images from JP 59010001 (January 1984)

Entry format is JPYYNNNNNN or JPYNNNNNN. Where YY is the year of the Emperor's reign.

EspaceNet has brought another database (B3) online. This B3 database provides the original equivalent patent applications to also be retrieved and displayed. These are available in PDF format as an image. The coverage is,

You can access all these applications by doing a number search. The B2 database will present a Bibliographic page for that patent family. This page has a number of fields, which are, the requested patent, the patent {presented}, and equivalent {patent application} fields. Click on the quivalent or requested patent button, this will access the B3 database and retrieve the original filing and displays this in PDF format, readable by Acrobat Reader.

In determining the choice of the reference document in English, the EPO selects them based on the following selection order, the EP document in English, then the first US document published, then the first GB document published, etc.

Also when viewing EP applications, if the SR button is present then the search report for that application is also available. If not try the B3 database as that might have the search report.

We can enter multiple keywords and IPC marks and generate a search result listing. We can look at the abstracts and then immediately go and look at the full text of the patent. This site, the USPTO & IBM would seem to be the sites of choice for patent searching on the web.

The EPO now provides a European Patents Server which supplies whole PDF documents for EP Applications from January 2004 ~EP1,200,000.

European Patent Office Patent Information
European Publications Server (Whole PDF Documents)

The EPO is now providing online access to the correspondance of their case files.

EPOline - Online File Inspection