SCIT.ATR.PI.2007.IE

Annual Technical Report 2007 on Patent Information Activities submitted by Ireland (SCIT/ATR/PI/2007/IE)

Where URLs are requested below, it is preferred that either URLs which are likely to remain stable over time (three years or more) are provided, or home (main) page URLs are provided with a short explanation of how to access the corresponding information.

The term "patent" covers utility models and Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs). Offices which issue design patents should report their design patent information activities in their Annual Technical Reports on Industrial Design Information Activities.

I. Evolution of patent activities

Changes experienced in terms of application filings and grants with respect to the previous year

In 2007 the Irish Office received 943 patent applications, a decrease of just under 1% compared to 2006. 850 of these applications, i.e. 90%, were received from applicants within the State. The Patents Act, 1992 offers applicants the choice of a ten-year (short-term) or twenty-year (full-term) patent – in 2007 just under 49% of applicants opted for the full-term patent application.

The Office acts as a receiving office for European (EP) applications and also for applications filed under the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT). The number of EP applications filed in 2007 was 37, compared to 27 in 2006. The number of PCT applications filed went down from 145 to 125.

The number of European patent applications filed with the EPO in 2007 and designating Ireland was 129,890 an increase of 4.8% on the 2006 figure.

The Office granted 314 national patents, a reduction of 12% over the figure for 2006.

In 2007, the number of granted European patents designating Ireland was 31,723, a reduction of 6.4% over the 2006 figure.

A total of 65 requests for Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPC’s) were received in 2007 compared to 38 in 2006. During the year 27 certificates were granted and 9 requests were rejected. At the end of the year there were 77 requests pending.

Statistics can be found in the 2007 Annual Report at http://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/publications_report.aspx?article=3041b7d9-3b2b-489e-bf4e-45dfecebc5b5

Trends or areas experiencing rapid changes with respect to the previous year

In 2007 there has been a marked increase in the number of requests for Supplementray Protection Certificates (SPCs), up from 38 to 65. This would seem to indicate the considerable importance of these SPCs to the pharmaceutical industry anxious to extend as long as possible the duration of protection for their products.

URLs of web pages of the Office's website that provide statistics related to patents

Statistics can be found in the 2007 Annual Report at the following address:- http://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/publications_report.aspx?article=3041b7d9-3b2b-489e-bf4e-45dfecebc5b5

II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, distribution and use of primary and secondary sources of patent information

Publishing, printing, copying (main types of publications of the Office in the field of patent information, etc.)

The Office publishes the Patents Office Journal once a fortnight and this contains bibliographic information (applicant name, title of invention, date of filing, priority date where applicable and the application number) on new applications, published patent applications (i.e. 18 months after the priority date) and granted patents. The list of granted patents includes those granted both by our Office and by the EPO having Ireland as a designated state.

Since the latter part of 2002 the Office Journal has been published electronically in both HTML and pdf versions on the Office’s website at http://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/publications_download.aspx. A search/browse facility is also available.

Since 1995 the Office has published its patent applications on a series of CD-ROMs, the ESPACE-IE series, in co-operation with the EPO and using the MIMOSA software. This series contains searchable bibliographic data and abstracts with the complete document available in facsimile format. At present the collection covers the years 1995 to 2006 inclusive and it is expected that the 2007 disk will be available towards the end of 2007. All patent applications are also published in paper form. The Office also sends bibliographic data and abstracts of all published applications in electronic form on a fortnightly basis to the EPO for inclusion in its internal databases and incorporation onto the esp@cenet search facility.

Since June 2000 granted patent specifications are only published in pdf format on CD-ROM and are retrievable using the grant number. The Office has had its entire backfile of all granted specifications from 1927 to June 2000 scanned by the EPO and these documents are now also available via the esp@cenet search engine.

Main types of announcements of the Office in the field of patent information

The Patents Office Journal published every fortnight contains bibliographic information (applicant name, title of invention, date of filing, priority date where applicable and the application number) on both new applications and published applications (i.e. 18 months after the priority or filing date) and granted patents. The list of granted patents includes those granted both by our Office and by the EPO having Ireland as a designated state.

The Journal also contains information on changes to the status of applications and grants related to both patents and Supplementary Protection Certificates e.g. withdrawals, refusals, lapses etc.

Mass storage media used (paper, microforms, optical storage, etc.)

Since 1995 the Office has published its patent applications on a series of CD-ROMs, the ESPACE-IE series, in co-operation with the EPO and using the MIMOSA software. This series contains searchable bibliographic data and abstracts with the complete document available in facsimile format. At present the collection covers the years 1995 to 2006 inclusive and it is expected that the 2007 disk will be available towards the end of 2007. All patent applications are also published in paper form. The Office also sends bibliographic data and abstracts of all published applications in electronic form on a fortnightly basis to the EPO for inclusion in its internal databases and incorporation onto the esp@cenet search facility.

Since June 2000 granted patent specifications are only published in pdf format on CD-ROM and are retrievable using the grant number. The Office has had its entire backfile of all granted specifications from 1927 to June 2000 scanned by the EPO and these documents are now also available via the esp@cenet search engine.

III. Matters concerning abstracting, classifying, reclassifying and indexing of technical information contained in patent documents

Abstracting, reviewing, translating

All abstracts are submitted in English by applicants are checked and modified if necessary by the patent examiners.

Classification¹, preclassification² (if applicable), and reclassification³ activities; Classification system used, e.g., International Patent Classification (IPC), other classification (please indicate whether or not patent documents are classified by your Office and, if so, which classification is used)

All patent applications are classified according to the latest edition of the IPC (Eighth Edition). The Office applies the Core Level of the IPC to all its published documents. No indexing schemes are used in the Office. When a new version of the Core Level is published in 2009 the Office will reclassify its documents accordingly.

IV. Search file establishment and upkeep

File building

Because of the small number of patent examiners, the Office has contracted out the searching of national applications and does not maintain a search file.

V. Activities in the field of computerized and other mechanized search systems

In-house systems (online/offline)

The Office maintains an internal Patents database that contains all bibliographic data and legal status for Irish patents. The database can be searched free of charge by the public at our Information Centres in Kilkenny. The Office’s website now offers 3 facilities for accessing Irish patent information online:- the Patent Register Search allows access to current register information using the application or grant number; the Patent Database Search provides access to the patent collection via the bibliographic data, title and abstract fields; the SPC Database Search provides information on all published SPC information via the bibliographic data, product type and product identity.

The Office has a CD-ROM/DVD jukebox network with a capacity of 4400 disks and this contains the major collections of patent documents e.g. EP-A, WORLD, GlobalPat, etc. These collections may be searched using the MIMOSA software and are available to public visitors to the information centres in Kilkenny and Dublin. The patent examiners and the information centre staff also have online access to the EPOQUE search and BNS document retrieval systems of the EPO.

The Office uses the PTOLEMY administrative management system with the application server running under Microsoft Windows NT linked to a SQL database and client workstations running under Windows XP. The network uses Novell and TCP/IP.

VI. Administration of the industrial property office library, and information products and services available to the public (relating to facilities, e.g., for lodging applications, for assisting clients on searching procedures, for obtaining official publications and registry extracts)

Planning, administration, automation, security, buildings

The Office has an Information Centre in Kilkenny. This provides general information concerning intellectual property rights to the public as well as dealing with specific queries such as the provision of certified copies of documents, etc. Workstations are available giving access to the Register of Patents, the Patents Public Search facility and the jukebox CD-ROM/DVD network. Printed copies of patent documents going back to 1920 for most major countries can be supplied on request.

The Office website is linked into the EPO esp@cenet search facility offering the possibility of accessing over 30 million documents online including Irish patent information.

The Office’s website also provides an online renewal fee system which facilitates the payment of patent, trade mark and design renewal fees by credit and debit cards.

URLs of web pages of the Office's website that provide information on business procedures such as: filing, publication, examination and grant procedures related to patents; opposition and appeal procedures related to patents; etc.

The Office’s website provides basic information on many aspects the patent application process at the following address:- http://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/patents.aspx

URLs of web pages of the Office's website that provide a description of information products and services offered by the Office (e.g., patent search service(s) and patent databases), as well as information on how to access and utilize them

A description of the information products and services offered by the Office can be found at the following address:- http://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/publications.aspx

VII. Matters concerning mutual exchange of patent documentation and information

International or regional cooperation in the exchange of machine-readable information, e.g., bibliographic data, abstract and/or full text information

The Office supplies national bibliographic data in electronic format to the EPO for loading onto their EPOQUE database, for esp@cenet and for processing related to the production of the ESPACE-IE CD-ROM series.

The Office also provides and receives electronic renewal fee and legal status information for EP granted patents designating Ireland from the EPO.

Copies of all published Irish patent applications are sent to the United Kingdom Patents Office which maintains a comprehensive collection of Irish documents for search purposes.

At the present time priority documents may be exchanged only in paper form. Similarly, there is no current provision for the electronic filing of applications.

VIII. Other relevant matters concerning education and training in, and promotion of, the use of patent information, including technical assistance to developing countries (please indicate URLs of web pages of the Office’s website wherever appropriate)

Promotional activities (seminars, exhibitions, visits, advertising, etc.)

In 2007 the Office participated in the annual BT Young Scientist and Technology exhibition which attracted over 35,000 visitors in January. The Office again sponsored a special award in the competition, which was won by two students from Rossa College, Skibbereen, Co. Cork for their project "Safe Spike" - a device for making bale spikes on tractors much safer to use. The Office also participated in the Tullamore Show in August and in the National Ploughing Championships in September

The Office sought to promote awareness of intellectual property, particularly for SMEs, in cooperation with a number of County Enterprise Boards. Staff gave talks on IP with an emphasis on trademarks to participants at "Start Your Own Business Courses" organised by nine County Enterprise Boards.

IX. Other general information related to the Office that is available on the Internet -- URLs of web pages of the Office's website that:

provide information on legislation related to patents

All current legislation concerning patents and Supplementary Protection Certificates can be found on the Office's website at the following address:- http://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/legislation.aspx

contain the Annual Report of the Office

The 2007 Annual Report is available in pdf format at the following address:- http://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/publications_report.aspx?article=3041b7d9-3b2b-489e-bf4e-45dfecebc5b5

contain patent-related news regarding the Office

Patent-related news regarding the Office may be found in the "What's New" section of the homepage at the following address:- http://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/homepage.aspx

X. Other relevant matters

The Office has successfully progressed one of its strategic objectives of using technology in order to facilitate e-business activities and the dissemination of intellectual property information via its website. An Irish language version of the site is currently under development.

The website facilitates the perusal of Irish patent, trade mark and design registers on-line and free of charge. In addition, a computerised search facility facilitates the inspection of details of Irish published patent applications and granted patents and pending and registered trade marks. The Office’s website also permits free access to the esp@cenet database and search engine which hosts the largest volume of patent documentation available on the Internet. On-line access to the Office’s Official Journal is also provided free of charge, is searchable and allows for flexible viewing of trade marks in colour.

The online renewal system which facilitates the payment of patent, trade mark and design renewal fees by credit and debit cards continues to be used by more and more of our customers.

Web traffic analysis shows that the general public as well as Intellectual Property professionals make extensive use of the search facilities and information available on our website.