Problems at the EPO could affect your patent search speed

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We’ve heard today from a couple of different sources that the European Patent Office’s Open Patent Services (OPS) server is experiencing some technical difficulties related to a recent upgrade to a new version.  The service has been operating slowly and timing out frequently.

This is notable particularly for those of us using a patent search system which has incorporated links out to either esp@cenet or OPS.  In many cases systems will incorporate these links to retrieve patent images, patent drawing mosaics, or legal status information directly from the EPO’s databanks, rather than having to load the data on their own servers.

If your patent search service relies on these links, you may be seeing slow response times and time-out problems related to this issue.

This post was contributed by Intellogist team member Kristin Whitman.