On 21 September the European Patent Office (EPO) announced that its Technology Intelligence Platform (TIP) provides free access to PATSTAT data together with enhanced Python notebooks, letting users process, analyse and visualise worldwide patent data in the browser and blend it with business data and other statistics. The platform already offers more than 100 Python notebooks, supported by e-learning modules and quick-start guides; a new collection of advanced PATSTAT notebooks takes users from the fundamental concepts of patent data to advanced patent analytics methods, covering patent families, filing and publication dates, legal events, citation dynamics, filing strategies and technology trends, with reproducible extraction and analysis examples. TIP gives each user a secure browser-based environment, can synchronise code with code-sharing platforms, and produces visualisations from geographical maps and network diagrams to heatmaps and citation flows. Access requires only an EPO account, while the PATSTAT data itself remains available as a bulk data set or through PATSTAT Online.
This is not a change in examination rules but a lowering of the barrier to patent intelligence: PATSTAT analyses that once required a self-hosted database and computing environment can now be run free of charge in an EPO-hosted environment, with the most direct value for competitor monitoring, technology roadmapping and early freedom-to-operate research. J&C recommends that teams doing competitor monitoring, technology roadmapping or early freedom-to-operate research register for TIP with an EPO account, run the official advanced notebooks in the test environment first, then substitute their own technology classes, applicant lists or product keywords; check how PATSTAT defines patent families, legal events and citations before using the results in external reports, and note the non-commercial terms of use of the notebooks.
