Your questions answered

What does the term "Crown copyright" mean?

In general terms, the owner of a copyright work is the person who creates it unless it is made in the course of employment, in which case the employer is the first owner of any copyright in the work. Where a work is made by an officer or servant of the Crown in the course of their duties, copyright in the work belongs to the Crown and not to the author of the work.

It covers a wide range of material, including legislation, government codes of practice, Ordnance Survey mapping, government reports, official press releases, government forms and many public records.

Information regarding the use of Crown copyright material is available from the Office of Public Sector Information.

How can patent documents assist in R&D?

Before starting an R&D project, an effective study of the state of the art is useful and advisable. Patents contain detailed technical information. This information often cannot be found anywhere else, and is available quickly, as most patent applications are published 18 months after the first filing.

The information held in patent documents can also help to avoid duplication of R&D work and can provide solutions to technical problems. They can identify who is active in any technology area, enabling companies to monitor the innovation strategies of competitors and other key players at an early stage.

Searches in patent literature can be conducted by anyone, using the free of charge Espacenet patent database on the internet. It provides access to more than 60 million patent documents from all over the world. All documents are classified by technological areas on the basis of the International Patent Classification (IPC) which is the world-wide standard.

Espacenet has a help system giving guidance and advice on searching, and an online tutorial with search strategies and background information.