Here are some basic things you should know before using Espacenet.
Patents are legal titles that protect inventions. They give their holder a temporary private right to prevent others from using his patented invention. This is often necessary to recoup the R&D investment needed to develop the invention. The patent system thus promotes innovation by financially rewarding inventors.
In exchange for this exclusive right, the patent holder must publicly disclose details of the invention. Today, patents are usually published and consulted using electronic means.
In many technical fields, patents are the optimum source of information for the following reasons:
Do not expect to cover the whole prior art by searching in national patents only.
Espacenet limits the number of fields you can access; you should bear that in mind when evaluating the result of a search.
Commercial patent databases usually offer
You should always be aware of the content of the database you are using, and know its limitations.
Patents are classified according to various schemes covering all possible technical fields. You should systematically use classifications that provide an objective way of finding relevant documents. Keywords can be unreliable as there are often multiple words describing a particular concept.