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Home / epo register / patents / Epoline 24/7

Epoline 24/7

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The EPO have finally given in, probably to pressure originating from other time zones, and made the European patent register (epoline) fully available "24/7", according to an announcement here. The IPKat assumes this to mean that the register, which until now was only available in full during European working hours, will now be viewable all day, every day. This is, of course, very good news for anyone interested in obtaining information about patent prosecution at other times of the day. US and Japanese practitioners, in particular, will presumably be very happy with this.

Merpel pedantically wonders whether this should in fact mean "23.5/7", since the EPO still apparently need half an hour each morning to do some offline tinkering. It doesn't, however, have quite the same ring to it.

More services available 24/7 here, here and here.
Epoline 24/7 Epoline 24/7 Reviewed by David Pearce on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 Rating: 5

3 comments:

  1. AnonymousWednesday, 11 June 2008 at 06:37:00 GMT+1

    Not just patent attorneys in USA David. How about USPTO Examiners sucking their pencils and wondering how best to express their obviousness objections in a FAOM. Quick look at the EPO's EESR opinion might give them a flying start, no?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousWednesday, 11 June 2008 at 19:23:00 GMT+1

    I guess 24/7 really means 7 hours out of the available 24 in a given day. Just to see if it were true I tried to use Register Plus and got the very familiar warning:

    The images database is currently unavailable. It can be accessed during our office working hours only. These are: Monday to Friday (except public holidays), 08.00 to 18.00 hrs CET. You can, however, continue to search bibliographic, patent family and legal status data.

    Maybe I'll try again another day. As of today, though, it is not 24/7.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousWednesday, 2 July 2008 at 14:12:00 GMT+1

    Well, this is only to scare users off as the message still appears but the images are actually available.

    ReplyDelete

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