Mosaics

From Intellogist

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EPO Drawing Mosaics

EPO drawing mosaics are images consisting of a composite of six representative patent drawing pages displayed as thumbnails, allowing all patent drawings to be condensed to just a few pages. Intended to provide a quick view of the technical matter covered by a patent, mosaics are a useful tool for patent searchers. Inspecting six images per page can expedite searches reliant upon patent drawings, such as mechanical searches, because the searcher is saved the time required to move through several pages of images to determine the exact specifications of the patent in question.

Availability

Mosaics are produced by the European Patent Office (EPO), but in some cases, they are licensed to commercial vendors and offered by web-based commercial search products. Commercial vendors generally provide links to the mosaics from within their product, retrieving mosaics from esp@cenet upon request. It is notable that the mosaics are freely available from the EPO website, so non-subscribers would be able to access these mosaics anyway. However, by incorporating this free content into their search systems, commercial providers make accessing these images more efficient. Easy access to mosaics through the system's normal workflow process can even be a selling point for these products.

Various systems provide links to esp@cenet mosaics in a number of ways through their user interfaces. The three screenshots below provide examples of how systems use external links to allow their searchers quick access to mosaics.