On October 28-31, 2019, representatives of the Eurasian Patent Office (EAPO) participated in the annual Patent Information Conference organized by the European Patent Office (EPO) in Bucharest, Romania.

The EPO Patent Information Conference is a key event in the field of patent information, a global forum for discussion current trends and professional tools in this area. Presentations and discussion rounds of the conference gathered representatives of the patent community and business to discuss the advantages of new products and services. Patent information providers got practical advice from users and exchanged plans for the development of information resources.

Taking into account the EAPO strategy for the patent information development, the EAPO delegation was particularly interested in the EPO new approaches to the patent search with the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the chemical structure searching strategy, technologies for more efficient use and development of the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC).

The participants of the conference discussed the possibilities and limitations of the use of AI tools for search and classification of patent information, discussed dissemination and exchange of information on the legal status of patents, methods and tools used in patent analysis, got acquainted with the new functionality of the patent search systems Espacenet (developed by EPO) and Patentscope (developed by WIPO).