How
to Get Patents from the German Patent and Trade Mark Office, DEPATISNET
Hints
from Friedrich Engel and Jay McKnight
The following instructions provide an easy way to view and get
good-quality printouts of patent letters from virtually all nations
worldwide, at
no charge.
The patents are in Adobe "Acrobat" (PDF). Therefore to view or print
the patents, you must have Adobe Reader installed on your PC
system. If you don't have it already, download it from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
and install it.
The first window says: "Willkommen im
DEPATISnet "
For English, > click
on the "Union
Jack" (British flag)
The second window gives general
instructions, which you should read carefully. If you want more
information, click "Help" on the bar
at the top.
Since you are beginners, >click
"Beginner's search".
The third window "Beginner -- Search
query" is the page where
you enter the patent information in one or more search boxes. Note that
they are "logically anded".
For older patents (prior to about
1995) in some countries (e.g. Germany) you must know the country and
the patent number. In this case:
In the left-most selection box,
look in the drop-down for
the issuing country's ISO name abbreviation and >click it.
In the middle entry field, enter
the number of the patent
desired. Enter numbers only (i.e., no commas, decimal points or
similar).
For other countries (e.g. US and
France) you can search using any or all of the search boxes.
If you use the "Search in Full
Text" box, and you enter several words, the default is a logical "or".
You can enter "and" , "or", and "not" if needed.
When you have filled in one or more
of the search boxes, >click in the field "Start search", or
simply press ENTER
The fourth window is the "Beginner >
Results List".
If you want to see the "Bibliographic
Data"
(title, applicant, inventor, application date, country of application,
publication date, etc), >click on the Publication
Number.
If the Adobe PDF icon appears in the
"Display PDF" column, you can see and print the patent itself --
>Click the Adobe PDF icon.
The fifth window "Hitlist Entry m/n" is
the main selection
field for viewing and printing the patent one page at a time.
For "Resolution", 300 dpi (on the bar
at the top) gives good
results, and a fairly short printout time on a laser printer.
Selection of Page(s) of the patent is
achieved by > clicks on the inconspicuous arrows ">" and
"<" below the
text "Hitlist entry". Here, you
can navigate through all (!) pages of the patent, but you can only see
one page at a time.
Navigation through the patent may
also be achieved by > clicks on the entries "Bibliographic
data" // "First page" // ... "Drawing".
To print the page you are now
viewing, > click on the printer icon on the toolbar at the
top of the page. (You can only print one page at a time.)
The process at first seems a very complicated , but be assured:
DEPATISnet is faster than browsing through your patent file!