Espacenet is the online database from EPO that provides free access to more than 70 million patent documents worldwide, containing information about inventions and technical developments from 1836 to today.
Among data contained, is very interesting to understand what applicant name is displayed from this online resource.
Let's take an example: US PATENT
6646858
The web page lists as applicants:
Applicant(s):
FILTEC GMBH [DE] +
And by pressing the + you will also get the names:
DINGENOTTO MEINOLF, ; KUHLE JORG, ; FILTEC FILTERTECHNOLOGIE FUER DIE ELECTRONIKINDUSTRIE GMBH
Let's see what these names are.
The first one, shown before pressing the +, is the standard name (as from table TLS208 in patstat) taken at the moment of publication of the document.
By pressing the + key we get the names of applicant(s) how they are written in DOCDB (or in TLS206 in patstat).
Why pressing + we see more names than the one shown in the first instance? Because (as for most of US patents) between first publication and grant there has been a
change in legal status introducing the real owner and removing inventors from applicants list.
PRS Date :
2003/09/22
PRS Code :
AS
Code Expl.:
ASSIGNMENT
NEW OWNER :
FILTEC FILTERTECHNOLOGIE FUR DIE ELEKTRONIKINDUSTR
EFFECTIVE DATE :
20021120
We have a confirmation of thsi fact by checking the first publiation of the patent that is:
US2003090856 and it shows as applicants:
Applicant(s):
DINGENOTTO MEINOLF, ; KUHLE JORG, ; FILTEC FILTERTECHNOLOGIE FUER DIE ELECTRONIKINDUSTRIE GMBH
So to sum up what we discovered:
Espacenet shows the standard name (standardized by EPO) of applicants at the moment of publication of document.
Pressing + we get the orginal names as written in the document.
Names displayed are not sensitive to legal status changes like change of ownership or correction of names.
