Coverage of linked open EP data

Coverage of European patent (EP) applications

Linked open EP data contains the bibliographic data of:

• EP applications and publications; and
• the related applications and publications from other patent authorities.

In other words, it covers:

Applications

• EP applications
• International (PCT) of EP applications
• Priorities of EP applications
• Non-EP applications in the same simple patent family as an EP application

Publications

• EP publications
• Publications that an EP publication cites directly or indirectly (indirectly means via non-patent literature)
• Non-EP publications where the application is in the same simple patent family as an EP application

The data is updated weekly.

Notes:

• For EP documents, coverage includes most of the bibliographic data available. For non-EP documents, coverage is limited to basic patent identification information.
• Data directly linked to EP publications – except citations and IPC classifications – is provided as it was published. All other data may be subject to updates, for example because of a change in IPC or CPC classification or corrections.
• The data does not include citations provided by applicants because they are typically of poor quality. However, it does include citations from all other sources – for example from search, examination, opposition and third-party observations.
• All EP publications have three patent:titleOfInvention properties, one for each of the EPO's three official languages. They have the language tags @en, @de and @fr.
• All EP publications have three patent:representation properties, one for each of the HTML, XML and PDF representations – with the exception of Euro-PCT publications published by WIPO and not republished by the EPO, which have HTML and XML representations only. See, for example, https://data.epo.org/linked-data/data/publication/EP/3102070/A1/-
• The simple family is also called the "DOCDB family". All applications are members of exactly one simple family. Most families have one representative member.
• The rdfs:seeAlso property links EP patent RDF resources to RDF resources from other offices. However, currently the only such links are to applications from the Korean Patent Office.

For more details on the linked open EP application data, see the patent ontology overview page.

Coverage of the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC)

Linked open EP data contains the most-relevant data from the CPC.

The CPC is a patent classification scheme with about 250 000 classifications covering all technical fields. More information is available on the CPC website at https://www.cooperativepatentclassification.org .

The data is updated whenever a new version of the CPC comes into force – typically three to five times a year.

For more details on the linked open CPC data, see the CPC ontology overview page.