Legal documentation: The role of the European patent office

Legal documentation at the EPO is primarily concerned with three areas relating to the EPC: historical documentation, legal sources, case law. Whereas the historical documentation will probably continue to be implemented with traditional documentation methods, electronic data bases are particularly well suited for access to sources of the law including primary and delegated legislation and for case law, since these originate at the EPO and data carriers can be produced as by-products of the publication process at the EPO. The data may be used for building up a data base for the purposes of the EPO itself as well as for public use, or could be supplied at low cost to external data base operators. In order to facilitate access to the rapidly developing case law the EPO maintains electronic headnote and keyword files in the three official languages of the EPO. Providing online access to these files must be seriously considered. Since in contrast to full text files these files are still comparatively small, it is not necessary to use a large computer, and word processing systems can be used for these documentation tasks.