DEPATISnet is a service provided to you by the German Patent and Trade Mark Office. You can conduct online searches in patent publications from around the world stored in the database of DEPATIS, the in-house patent information system of the GPTO.

Throughout Europe, national patent offices and the European Patent Office (EPO) offer free patent information on the Internet Patents reveal solutions to technical problems, and they represent an inexhaustable source of information: more than 80 percent of man's technical knowledge is described in patent literature. From the middle of 1998 onwards, esp@cenet users have been able to access the bibliographic data of all patents published in the preceding two years by any member state of the European Patent Organisation, as well as by the European Patent Office and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). In addition, full-page facsimile images of documents are also retrievable to facilitate more detailed analysis of these documents. The data for this particular service is stored at the relevant national office.

EUR-Lex provides free access to public EU documents in the 24 official languages. This includes: * the Official Journal of the European Union * EU law (EU treaties, directives, regulations, decisions, consolidated legislation, etc.) * preparatory acts (legislative proposals, reports, green and white papers, etc.) * EU case-law (judgements, orders, etc.) * international agreements * EFTA documents * other public documents EUR-Lex is based on the CELEX database, and is updated daily.