What happens if I click on "In my patents list"?

At any stage while you are using Espacenet, you can store a document in your own personal list by clicking on the star icon. The star appears in red as soon as the document is in the list. You can store up to 100 documents, which you can view as long as you do not remove them from the list. The list expires after one year of non-use. This period resets automatically each time you modify the list.

What happens if I click on the "Register" button?

If you click on the "Register" link (where activated) for a particular country this takes you straight to the corresponding entry in the national register concerned. For EP and Euro-PCT documents, clicking on the "EP Register" button allows you to view all the information pertaining to the patent application concerned, from first publication through to grant and beyond (legal status data, patent family details, etc.) in the European Patent Register. For EP and Euro-PCT documents, clicking on the "EP Register" button allows you to view all the information pertaining to the patent application concerned, from first publication through to grant and beyond (legal status data, patent family details, etc.) in the European Patent Register.

What happens if I click on the red "patent translate" button?

This feature provides machine translations of English abstracts into one of the supported languages, and of non-English texts into English. The text for translation is sent to specially "trained" machine translation engines, jointly developed by the EPO and Google, where it is processed and returned to the user.

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How can I view the claim structure?

If you click on the "Claims tree" button you will obtain a tree representation of the independent and dependent claims. Click on the + (plus) sign next to the claim number to expand the claims view and see how the dependent claims are hierarchically related. Click on the - (minus) sign to collapse it again.

Why are the claims sometimes in French or German or another language altogether?

Espacenet aims to have one English-language full text available for each set of corresponding patents (or "equivalents"). However, if a European patent application is available in, for example, French only, this text will be displayed in French instead.

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How can I search in the text of the claims?

Since all claims are downloaded to the browser, you can use your browser's own search functionality.

How can I view chemical structures in the full text?

To view an image of the chemical structures in the document, click on "Original document" (where available).