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Fair use charter for esp@cenet and OPS

Our services:

The patent information services "esp@cenet" and "Open Patent Services" (OPS) are provided free of charge 24 hours per day, 7 days a week.

• Regular daily maintenance outages are scheduled between 05.00 and 05.15 CET Monday to Saturday. Additional extraordinary maintenance outages will be announced in the News Flashes section on http://ep.espacenet.com/.
• Access to and use of the services is governed by the "Terms and conditions of use" http://ep.espacenet.com/?locale=en_EP&view=disclaimer.

Our request to you:

1. esp@cenet for human users

   esp@cenet is an EPO patent information service exclusively dedicated to human users and is not intended to be a source for bulk downloads. You can help us maintain a trouble-free service, by observing the following:
   • The tolerated threshold from any individual user (IP address) is 10 search related actions per minute.
   • Automated searches (robots) are not supported and may result in access being denied; for automated queries please use the OPS tool (http://ops.espacenet.com/).
   • Human users encountering problems due to the service's robot detection feature should contact the EPO at [email protected].

2. Open Patent Services for automated queries

   OPS is the alternative access for automated queries for fair amounts of data. In order to avoid overloading the system please observe the following:

   1. Access via a simple client:

      • The tolerated threshold from any individual user (IP address) is 10 search related actions per minute.

   2. Access via a portal or integrated system (e.g. software packages in which OPS is only one part of the service offered):

      • Such access requires the conclusion of a data usage agreement which can be requested by sending an e-mail including the relevant IP address(es) to [email protected]
      • The tolerated threshold for this usage is 1 request per second for family related actions, which are resource intensive.
      • Due to operational circumstances, it may be necessary to temporarily lower this threshold.
      • Should further operational constraints apply, users will be informed directly.

   3. Access for automated data retrieval (robot)

      • Automated data retrieval (robots) will be permitted for fair amounts of data only. OPS is not to be used for bulk data retrieval. If you need large sets of data, please contact us at [email protected], we offer a range of more appropriate means or carriers to provide you with bulk data
      • Such access requires the conclusion of a data usage agreement which can be requested by sending an e-mail including the relevant IP address(es) to [email protected]
      • The maximum traffic volume allowed is approximately 1 Mbits per second. The maximum data volume and connection rates may vary due to operational circumstances.
      • It is strongly recommended that data retrieval activities by robots are scheduled at night-time (19.00 CET to 07.00 CET) or during the week-end.

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