. . . . .

Would-be inventors take note that in the next few months, Europe should
start putting its patents on the Internet—so you can search what’s already
been patented. For a progress report, keep an eye on
http://www.european-patent-office.org.

The European Patent Office is organising a scheme
which means each country will have its patents on a server with links to all the
other patent sites. So people looking up a patent needn’t know the physical
location of the data they’re searching.