What are the features and uses of "ESPACENET" ?

ESPACENET is a free online patent search database developed by the European Patent Office (EPO), providing access to patent information from across the world. ESPACENET offers free access to more than 130 million patent documents worldwide, containing information about inventions and technical developments from 1782 to today. It has a user-friendly interface available in almost all European languages. It enables users with little or no experience in patent searching to obtain an overview of the state of the art, to follow new developments or to find out who invented what. Espacenet is a free patent search tool accessible to beginners and experts. Supporting information can help you understand whether a patent has been granted and if it is still in force. Uses of Espacenet It can be used to: search and find patent publications machine-translate patent documents track the progress of emerging technologies find solutions to technical problems see what competitors are developing Features of Espacenet Extensive coverage by the tool in various forms Inexpensive, since it is a free tool launched by European Patent Office (EPO) Multilingual advanced search in languages English, French and German Option to choose office/language for the Espacenet interface with access to 38 offices, multiple languages and countries It provides for Machine translation: Espacenet will translate from English, French and German into 28 other EU languages (and vice versa). Espacenet will also translate Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Korean into English, and vice versa Database of Patent families and cited patents. It provides a Claims tree, which is the visualisation of the hierarchy of a patent's claims.