Abstract
The coverage and the functionality of free online databases for Chinese patent data have improved gradually over the last few years. People without knowledge of Chinese now have more opportunities to find information using English search interfaces. English machine translations of Chinese patents and utility models became available on the internet in April 2008, making it easier for users to understand the content of the documents. Furthermore, English abstracts for utility models have been included in free databases, either as human or machine translations. English legal status information for Chinese documents has also recently become available in two databases. In addition to patents and utility models, users can now also search information on Chinese industrial designs via an English search interface. This article gives an overview of the options for searching for Chinese patent data in free databases, namely the European Patent Office’s esp@cenet and various sources offered by the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (SIPO). Patent information users will see how they can search both English language sources and use the Chinese interfaces to retrieve additional information — even without being able to read Chinese.
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