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CONTENT SYNDICATION 
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CONTENT SYNDICATION
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BLOGROLL OPML:
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Search in IPJUR.COM
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BLOG@IP::JURPatent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003EPO launches new website.The European Patent Office (EPA) has launched a new version of its website. Also the esp@cenet site now comes as version 3 thereof in the same new and fresh look.
At a first glance, the new user interface of esp@cenet looks smarter than the old one. The content of a certain subset of all patent documents are now available as HTML text. However, there seems to be at least one significant impairment: The old version had provided a printable PDF image of a retrieved patent document, although merely in a somewhat boring page-by-page fashion. Now the entire patent document comes as a single PDF file - but which is not printable. Hence, as reading a complex patent document on the screen is next to impossible, this functionality of the new esp@cenet version might well be considered to be virtually useless. It should also be noted that even the (public) discussion of technical measures how to circumvent the anti-printing protection of esp@cenet would be considered a crime under the new copyright rules which are enforceable throughout Europe as far as the Directive 2001/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society has been cast into national law.
I have not yet grasped why the creators of the new version of esp@cenet have (voluntarily?) accepted to deteriorate their service form the very beginning. There seem to be no real copyright restrictions preventing them from providing full featured printable PDF images of patent documents. Perhaps, I guess, there are some non-public agreements with commercial vendors of patent documents.
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