Like the USPTO and WIPO, the European Patent Database (Espacenet) offers free patent search services with 95 million patent documents from around the world in its database. Furthermore, in 2013, an independent study compared Espacenet with Depatis Net, Free patents online, Google Patent and the USPTO. The study gave the European Patent Database the highest score for customer support and patent data coverage.
Espacenet’s patent database is updated daily and offers special features such as the Global Dossier and Common Patent Citations (CCD) tools. Applicants file an application multiple times at multiple patent offices, and the Global Dossier allows access to the documents of the corresponding patent offices in one place. Similarly, the Common Patent Citations provide patent electronic citation data from five patent offices in one place.
Therefore, if you do a free search on the national patent office website and ignore the European Patent Database, the results will undoubtedly be incomplete. Conducting a patent search on the European Patent Database is not difficult, as we now know how to conduct patent searches on the USPTO database, Google Patents and WIPO.
To search the European Patent Database, type in your browser’s address bar and you will find advanced search options to choose from, which are similar to those found at WIPO and the USPTO.