4 July 2022
Two years after its initial launch,
the EPO has updated and further expanded the information in its “Fighting
coronavirus” platform to reflect the ongoing changes in the technology
landscape to counter the pandemic. Most of the 42 search strategies added to the
platform today relate to more medicines that have become of interest as
COVID-19 therapeutics, and the others concern additional technologies relevant
to the so-called “New Normal”. There are now around 350 search strategies in
this free resource, an almost threefold increase from the original platform,
all compiled by dozens of EPO experts.
As a world leader in supplying
technical information, the EPO took the initiative in the first months of the
pandemic to support researchers, businesses and decision-makers by sharing
patent information on technologies which are useful in combating the novel
coronavirus SAR-CoV-2 or in treating COVID-19. This expanding resource has been
visited almost 75 000 times since its launch, earning praise from many
quarters. The platform now encompasses such diverse technologies as vaccines,
medicines, diagnostics, healthcare informatics, building and vehicle design
(e.g. to minimise transmission), smartphone apps as well as everyday items like
masks and disinfectants. Innovation has flourished in many different areas, and
the technical information in patent documents are often published nowhere else.
Because the volumes of potentially
relevant patent documents can be bewildering (e.g. hundreds or even thousands
of documents just for one type of vaccine), EPO patent examiners and data
analysts created these ready-made search strategies to help researchers easily
focus on the topics that are most relevant to their own work. These searches
run in Espacenet, the EPO’s free online database that contains over 130 million
patent documents from over 100 countries.
The platform also includes videos and
podcasts from seven inspirational scientists working in the fields of
healthcare or satellite tracking (essential for contact tracing).
Patent applications are initially
confidential and are typically published some 18 months after their first
filing date. This means that many of the innovations conceived since the first
wave struck early in 2020 are only beginning to appear in the patent databases
now, with many more expected to be published in the coming months and years.
However, a great many inventions which are relevant today were described in
patent applications filed in response to the earlier SARS and MERS outbreaks
(of 2002-2004 and 2012-2015 respectively). This is why so many documents
already appear in the databases as they relate to these previous coronavirus
epidemics.
For applicants who require a fast
track patent procedure, regardless of the technology they are developing, the
EPO offers accelerated prosecution of European patent applications.
