CrossAsia is an interdisciplinary portal and central access point for online information on East and Southeast Asian studies. The portal provides an integrated search of distributed databases (free and subject to licence), access to selected digital collections and an online guide of electronic resources related to East and Southeast Asian studies (OGEA). Access for Max Planck researchers is subject to a local agreement free of charge.

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.