Patents reveal solutions to technical problems, and they represent an inexhaustible source of information: more than 80 percent of man's technical knowledge is described in patent literature.

esp@cenet is a free service that can provide you with answers to questions like:


• What is my competitor doing?
• Who owns this patent?
• What is new in my field of technology?

National information: fast, complete, up-to-date

Using esp@cenet via one of the national office websites, it is possible to search all the patent applications published in the past two years (or more in some cases) by any national office in the European Patent Organisation.

The following fields are available for search:

• Publication number
• Application number
• Priority number
• Publication date
• Applicant's name
• Inventor's name
• Technical field (using the IPC classification system)
• Text in the title (in the language of publication)
A hit list provides access to the full bibliographic details of the documents, plus an image of each of the pages.

"Worldwide" patent information

esp@cenet can also be used to find English-language abtracts of documents in the European Patent Office's in-house databases of patents from throughout the world (a list of the countries covered is shown in the table). A large proportion of the data goes back to 1970. Following an online search, esp@cenet displays the bibliographic data and an English-language abstract for each document. If a patent document was published in several countries, then one representative document has been selected for inclusion in the esp@cenet data. If they are available, drawings and the full text of the document are provided online

Use esp@cenet it's your gateway to patents!

The European Patent Office has worked together with the member states of the European Patent Organisation and the European Commission to set up the esp@cenet service on the internet.

"Worldwide" service countries covered:

1. Abstracts, bibliographic data and full text:
EPO, France, Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and WIPO.

2. Abstracts and bibliographic data:
China and Japan

3. Bibliographic data only:
Argentina, ARIPO, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria Canada, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Ellas, Eurasian Patent Office, Finland, GDR, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy Kenya, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Mexico Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, OAPI, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Soviet Union, Spain, Turkey, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

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Worldwide Patents Search Form
We entered "ultrasonic" in field Title or Abstract.
43139 matching documents have been found.