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Coverage of worldwide database

The worldwide database lets you search for information about published patent applications from over 90 patent-granting authorities.


It is based on the PCT minimum documentation , which is defined by WIPO as the minimum requirement for patent collections used to search for prior-art documents for the purpose of assessing novelty and inventiveness. The EPO has expanded the coverage of its database far beyond the PCT minimum documentation to include data from other countries and other time periods. Moreover, additional information, such as CPC symbols and references to cited documents , is added to other fields by examiners in the course of their work.


The abstracts of non-examined Japanese patent applications filed by Japanese applicants since October 1976 and all patent applications filed since 1998 which do not have a Japanese priority have been available in the worldwide database since January 2005. Due to the translation process from Japanese into English, these abstracts are not available until six months after publication.


The following table gives an overview of the availability of the PCT minimum documentation in the worldwide database:


Country Facsimiles from Abstracts from European classification
CH 1888, from CH1 onwards 1970 1888
DE 1877, from DE1 onwards 1970 1877, from DE1 onwards
EP 1978, from EP1 onwards 1978 1978
FR 1900 1970 1902
GB 1859 1893 1859
US 1836, from US1 onwards 1970 1836, from US1 onwards
WO 1978 1978 1978


Global patent data coverage

Click here for details. This table does not always reflect the most recent data coverage.


More up-to-date information can be accessed in the Useful Tables Section under Contents and coverage of the DOCDB bibliographic files. This file is updated weekly.


Note: The EPO relies on data delivery from more than 90 patent-granting authorities and therefore cannot guarantee that the data is complete.


For more information on Espacenet, see the following pages: