In favour of humans

Bijzonder goed nieuws voor wie wel eens eens Europees octrooi moet uitprinten:  “We are pleased to announce that from 4 November 2005, esp@cenet will feature full document printing and downloading. One of the major considerations in offering this service was to make sure that it was "bombproof", ie that demand on the EPO systems would not exceed the capacity to deliver. After all, our users currently download 11 million pages per week, albeit not at one time!

We were concerned that full document downloads and printing might encourage gleeful esp@cenetters to start printing and downloading in earnest, and this might have put an intolerable strain on the system. We are now satisfied that we have the right technical solution (users must assemble and collate the pages of a document before downloading it), and a screening system to discriminate against automated document retrieval in favour of humans (when requesting a download, users have to type in a graphically displayed keyword in response to a prompt).” Lees hier meer.