To the PM,
BIPO is still not up and running as far as expired patents are concerned...you don't need any special plug-in anymore but it still continually redirects you to espacenet...
The espacenet search engine is so lame, only google can save them now...the search engine can't even search their own database by words in the title...try it with words like ejector, fusil, chasse...or anything and the results are beyond disappointing...when you do get a big results list (by entering F41 only), you only get the first 500 when all the old stuff that we're interested in is way in the back where you can't get to, because of the first 500 parameter...so I guess you really have to know the inpadoc family your looking for if you want to surf the European Patent Office...
It's not easy but it's not difficult either...you have my phone #...call me if you have trouble and I'll explain while we're both on the same website page... 10 minutes on the phone can explain it better than an hour of my typing.
There is a way through the back door to view the Belgian shotgun patents but it's hit or miss...once you're viewing the inpadoc family results list, when you click the patent title, it takes you to the classification page...on that page, you will sometimes see other Adobe icons under "also published as"...any number beginning with BE will show a Belgian patent...
There's a better way but it's a lot more time consuming...
Last edited by Robert Chambers; 12/18/07 08:57 PM.
