espacenet.com broken

[PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>]

Hello,

It currently seems impossible to browse EP patents at

        http://www.espacenet.com
        http://ep.espacenet.com

Even entering an EP number at "view a patent application" leads to
a page which contains only

        null
        return to previous page

and then, if you click "return to previous page", leads you out
of the search mask altogether.

Under "conditions of use", the EPO says that

  - this is a database intended only for novice users, whereas expert
    users should consult commercial databases 

  - the EPO may at any time change or withdraw this offer without notice

It seems that the EPO still must justify itself before a lobby group
of proprietary information distributors from the paper age who don't
want the data to be disseminated for free.

An offer like espacenet.com, which is the only freely accessible
patent database, should imho not ever be "changed or withdrawn without
notice".  If such "change or withdrawal" is envisaged, we need an
alternative truly free espacenet.

We have built this kind of alternative at 

        http://swpat.ffii.org/patents/txt/ep/

by downloading most of the relevant data from espacenet, and we are
planning to distribute the raw (and ocr-ed) text data on DVDs at
upcoming IT trade fairs.

We hope that the current error is not a sudden panic reaction of an
EPO which needs to keep a lid on patent information for the benefit of
proprietary distribution channels, but just an error, which is as
obnoxious to anyone as to us.

-- 
Hartmut Pilch, FFII & Eurolinux Alliance              tel. +49-89-12789608   
Protecting Innovation against Patent Inflation       http://swpat.ffii.org/
130,000 signatures against software patents      http://www.noepatents.org/