Best regards.
G=E9rard Giroud
1- The content of the world-wide database corresponds to all the =
documents
available to the EPO examiners; 63 countries are covered.
For each document, the access depends on what is presently available in
electronic form at the EPO:
it can be only bibliographic information for very old document or the
complete document for the publications since approx. 1975.
For a more detailed description see:
http://dips-2.dips.org/dips/help/world/data2.htm
2-A search in the world-wide database will produce a result list =
(hit-list).
All documents retrieved are represented by a "reference document".
The "reference document" is the representative document of the patent =
family
to which the retrieved document (mentioned on the hitlist) belongs.
The "reference document" chosen is preferably in English, if such an
equivalent is available; if not in an other EPO official language.
For more details on the "reference document" see:
http://dips-2.dips.org/dips/help/world/data5.htm
3-The concept of "Patent Family" is very often understood in different =
ways;
the EPO gives a summary of the most frequently used definitions and the
definition used for espacenet in the following page:
http://dips-2.dips.org/dips/help/world/data3.htm
4-The content of the EP, WO and national documents servers(EPO Member
States) corresponds generally to the 2 last years of publications ( =
"first
publication" : application or patent).
Bibliographic data and facsimile images are available . Search in the =
Title
is also possible.
5- The content of the Japanese Patent Applications database is =
presented at
the following address:
http://dips-2.dips.org/dips/help/paj/data1.htm
6-Please note that when you are in one of the database (national, EP, =
WO,
World-wide, or Japanese..)you will find information on the content if =
you
click the "question mark" on the left side of the screen.
Other useful answer to question are also given there:
for example concerning the browsers, acrobat ,etc...see:
http://dips-2.dips.org/dips/help/paj/web1.htm
7-Since February, a new step of the implementation of espacenet is
completed: you can access all the facsimile images (complete text) of =
the
Documents retrieved in the "world-wide Database".
These are the Documents available to the EPO examiners from our =
"Electronic
Patent Library", some 15 Terabytes of data.