European Patent Office

First, read the Getting Started page to set up EPO OPS access.

Inpadoc

The EPO provides access to the Inpadoc database, which is roughly commensurate with the Espacenet database. You can fetch bibliographic information quickly and easily as:

>>> from patent_client import Inpadoc
>>> case = Inpadoc.objects.get("EP1000000A1")
>>> case.title
'Apparatus for manufacturing green bricks for the brick manufacturing industry'

Each case can also access Full Text, Images, and Inpadoc Families

>>> from patent_client import Inpadoc
>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> case = Inpadoc.objects.get("EP1000000A1")
>>> pprint(list(case.family)) # doctest +ELLIPSIS
[FamilyMember(...),
...
 FamilyMember(...)]

>>> case.images.full_document.sections
[Section(name='ABSTRACT', start_page=1), Section(name='BIBLIOGRAPHY', start_page=1), Section(name='CLAIMS', start_page=3), Section(name='DESCRIPTION', start_page=2), Section(name='DRAWINGS', start_page=5), Section(name='SEARCH_REPORT', start_page=11)]
>>> case.images.full_document.download() 
Downloads a .pdf of the document to the current directory

Filter (Search)

Inpadoc records are also searchable by keyword or key phrase. Common searches are available through the .filter interface. The filter parameters are resolved into a CQL query, which is documented fully here. If you wish to pass through a raw CQL query, just pass it as a ‘cql_query’ keyword argument to the filter. e.g.:

>>> results = Inpadoc.objects.filter(cql_query='pa="Google LLC"')
>>> len(results) > 500
True

Most of the CQL filters are available through the following convenience keyword arguments:

Keyword	CQL Equivalent	Notes
title	title
abstract	abstract
title_and_abstract	titleandabstract
inventor	inventor
applicant	applicant
inventor_or_applicant	inventorandapplicant
epodoc_publication	spn
epodoc_application	sap
priority	prioritynumber
epodoc_priority	spr
number	num	Pub, App, or Priority Number
publication_date	publicationdate
citation	citation
cited_in_examination	ex
cited_in_opposition	op
cited_by_applicant	rf
other_citation	oc
family	famn
cpc_class	cpc
ipc_class	ipc
ipc_core_invention_class	ci
ipc_core_additional_class	cn
ipc_advanced_class	ai
ipc_advanced_additional_class	an
ipc_advanced_class	a
ipc_core_class	c
classification	cl	IPC or CPC Class
full_text	txt	title, abstract, inventor and applicant

The two that are missing are “publication” and “application.” Those are two very common lookups that are handled differently. When publication or application is used as a keyword argument, the value is directly converted into the doc_db format, and the corresponding document is returned. Note that sometimes a .get will fail with application or publication if the kind code is not used. For example, EP applications frequently publish multiple times, so there may be an A1, A2, or A4 publication. Searches for EP100000 will thus return EP100000A1, EP100000A2, and EP100000A4. A filter will return all of them, and a get request will fail for mutiple records.

If you wish to use the publication or application fields on the search interface, pass them as a query to cql_query.

EPO Register

Warning

EPO register is still a work in progress, and is currently not working in v.3.

Patent Client can also retrive bibliographic and status information from the EP register.

>>> from patent_client import Epo 
>>> pub = Epo.objects.get("EP3221665A1") 
http://ops.epo.org/3.2/rest-services/number-service/publication/original/EP3221665A1)/epodoc {}
http://ops.epo.org/3.2/rest-services/register/publication/epodoc/EP.3221665.A1/biblio {}
>>> pub.status[0] 
{'description': 'Request for examination was made', 'code': '15', 'date': '20170825'}
>>> pub.title 
'INERTIAL CAROUSEL POSITIONING'
>>> pub.procedural_steps[0] 
http://ops.epo.org/3.2/rest-services/register/publication/epodoc/EP.3221665.A1/procedural-steps {}
{'phase': 'undefined', 'description': 'Renewal fee payment - 03', 'date': '20171113', 'code': 'RFEE'}

Searching is not available at present.

Original API URL: http://ops.epo.org