News from the world of esp@cenet

The Rospatent (Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks) Russian-interface esp@cenet server was launched in 2006. The database contains granted patents from 2000 to the present.

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If you would like to see the latest news from your national esp@cenet server available on this site please contact Yolanda Sánchez García.

Answers to the April quiz

April's quiz must have been surprisingly difficult judging by the number of correct answers we received...

To refresh your minds, on the occasion of the International Year of Natural Fibres the quiz was about the industrial application of natural fibres in the car industry.

We were looking for the ECLA class to which patent documents belong that describe natural fibres in the production of car seats - the answer is B60N2. The most frequently used natural fibres are cotton (with 18 results to be found in esp@cenet Worldwide), wool (9 results) and jute (4).

The winners are:
Enrico Ramunni (Italy )
B.Vijayan (India)
Elizabeth Fernandez (UK)
Ana Neves (Portugal)

May quiz - deadline 7 June

Summer has finally arrived in Vienna and more and more runners can be seen in the parks. Those who wish to run long distances and don't want to harm their joints, need specially adapted shoes.

One of the nominees of this year's European Inventor of the Year award has been a pioneer developing shock-absorbing running shoes. In the meantime, several of this inventions have been patented and commercialised.

What is the name of this inventor? Which of his patent applications that you can find in esp@cenet was published most recently (provide publication number and date)? Which patent application of the corresponding patent family shows the earliest publication date and what date is it? What is the common denominator of all the documents of the patent family?

Send your answers by 7 June 2009 to opus@epo.org specifying "esp@cenet May quiz" in the subject line. 5 winners will receive a special esp@cenet prize (so don't forget to tell us your postal address!).

Have fun!

The OPUS team

Interested in our first series of quizzes?

Here you can download the collection of the esp@cenet quizzes 2008 (pdf file).