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The EU patent office is horribly unfair to individual inventors. There are not even fee differences for a kid in their bedroom vs Apple when filing a patent. T
by nceqs3 5y ago
The EU patent office is horribly unfair to individual inventors. There are not even fee differences for a kid in their bedroom vs Apple when filing a patent.
Take data also, EPO will charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars for patent data. USPTO gives it to everybody for free.
- iechoz6H 5y ago"Take data also, EPO will charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars for patent data." This appears to be wrong, the full dataset is available as a free download: https://data.epo.org/linked-data/download/ https://data.epo.org/linked-data/download/ There is also a freely available API, with documentation at: https://data.epo.org/linked-data/documentation/api-overview.html https://data.epo.org/linked-data/documentation/api-overview....
- nceqs3 5y agoI am not talking about the patent images. That's not the data that most people are interested in. I am talking about ESpacenet, OPS, etc. which are the ones that people care about.
- iechoz6H 5y agoOPS data can be downloaded with a free account (up to 4GB per week): https://www.epo.org/searching-for-patents/data/web-services/ops.html https://www.epo.org/searching-for-patents/data/web-services/... ESpacenet appears to be available as at the very least a completely free online search: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/ https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/ Am I missing something?
- nceqs3 5y ago4GB is nothing for a dataset of that size and Espacenet is certainly available online, but it is heavily rate limited and they do not just allow you to download the full thing. The data was only a side point. My main frustration with the EPO is the fee structure.