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The online search in external databases and in the Internet is a very effective and valuable supplement to the search in the in-house databases of DEPATIS and EPOQUE. In 2003, the examiners of the GPTO accessed these hosts for a total of about 7 000 connect hours and used more than 150 different databases.
For state-of-the-art searches and the examination of patent applications, the GPTO uses the services of the following external hosts:
STN:........................ .....STN International c/o FIZ Karlsruhe (Karlsruhe, Germany)
EPOQUE/Java:..............EPO Query System
FIZ Technik:................. Fachinformationszentrum Technik (Frankfurt a.M., Germany)
QUESTEL-ORBIT:...... Questel (Paris, France)
EPIDOS – INPADOC: .European Patent Office (Vienna, Austria)
DIMDI:..........................Deutsches Institut für Medizinische Dokumentation und Information (Köln, Germany)
Details about these online search activities, such as the distribution of the total connect time to the different hosts and to the most important databases, may be seen from the attached table.
In addition to the databases containing technological and scientific information provided by the hosts listed above, the German Patent and Trade Mark Office has access to other information resources like the digital library Sciencedirect via the Internet. Legal information is available via databases of the Juris host (Saarbrücken, Germany).
Connecthours2003.doc - Connect hours to external databases in 2003
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