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Sunday, November 20, 2005

esp@cenet: PDF Patent Documents no Longer Page-by-Page Only.

Just in case someone should have overlooked it so far: The

esp@cenet service now provides patent documents in a single .PDF file for free. There is no longer any need for downloading .PDF files page-by-page:

"[...] We are pleased to announce that from 4 November 2005, esp@cenet will feature full document printing and downloading.

One of the major considerations in offering this service was to make sure that it was 'bombproof', ie that demand on the EPO systems would not exceed the capacity to deliver. After all, our users currently download 11 million pages per week, albeit not at one time!

We were concerned that full document downloads and printing might encourage gleeful esp@cenetters to start printing and downloading in earnest, and this might have put an intolerable strain on the system.

We are now satisfied that we have the right technical solution (users must assemble and collate the pages of a document before downloading it), and a screening system to discriminate against automated document retrieval in favour of humans (when requesting a download, users have to type in a graphically displayed keyword in response to a prompt).

These will protect the systems from abuse and overload, and ensure availability for all genuine users. We are grateful to the many volunteer testers who have worked tirelessly over the past few months to help us develop a reliable system. [...]"

So, they are boring us with a

captcha-style mechanism in order to prevent robots from downloading patent documents in a bulk mode.

The good news is not only that the clumsy old-fashioned page-by-page download-and-print mode has eventually been rendered redundant but also that there is such a big demand for authentic patent information in the general public. Obviously, wide circles of Internet-savvy people are highly interested in reading patent literature.

[Permalink]

It would be better to have patents in HTML pages, fully indexed by google, and thus searchable.

This PDF protected by a password is anyway crackable by machines (patched version of xpdf).

# posted by zoobab : 21 November, 2005 00:10

@zoobab: Hmmm... I've just checked a full captcha-protected download of EP 0,123,456. When opened with Acrobat Reader 7.x, the menu

File --> Document Properties -> Security

says:

"Security Method: No Security"

Hence, I do not believe that this pdf file is encrypted anyway.

# posted by Axel H Horns : 21 November, 2005 19:20

BLOG@IP::JUR

Patent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

esp@cenet: PDF Patent Documents no Longer Page-by-Page Only.

VPP