SCIT.ATR.PI.2008.HR

Annual Technical Report 2008 on Patent Information Activities submitted by Croatia (SCIT/ATR/PI/2008/HR)

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

Since this is the first ATR-PAT report SIPO Croatia presents the breakdown of patent activities for the last 5 years.

statistic

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

In the last 5-years period patent system of Croatia has undergone a dynamic development of the legislative framework. Several rounds of changes or amendments of the patent legislation in order to achieve its full harmonization with the intellectual property related legislative framework of the European Union (acquis communautaire). A number of changes were also required due to the new memberships of Croatia in the international agreements in intellectual property field (such as PLT).
Year 2008 in the field of patents was first of all characterized by the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the full membership of the European Patent Office and to the European Patent Convention. Before that, Croatia was included in European patent system as an extension state, via Cooperation and Extension Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Croatia and the European Patent Organization of 2004.

In year 2008, 400 patent applications and 6522 requests for the extension of the European applications to the Republic of Croatia were filed with the Office. The number of applications filed with the Office in 2008 is almost equal to the one in the previous year.
The number of international PCT applications entering into the national phase of procedure in the Republic of Croatia is continuing to decrease as expected – only 52 applications were filed. The reason for this is the impact of the mentioned Extension Agreement and EPC.
At the same time, along with this expected decrease of international patent applications, a smaller decrease in number of applications filed by domestic applicants was noticed as well.
A total of 329 applications were filed with the Office by domestic applicants in 2008. It is important to notice that natural persons as applicants still largely prevail as applicants, making 89% of the domestic applicants.
Non-resident applicants filed 71 applications, but 85% of such applicants are legal entities (companies).
The number of requests for extension of the European patent applications to the Republic of Croatia published in the official gazette of the Office during 2008 continues to grow - 6522 compared to the previous year when a total of 5130 such requests were published. Such an increase indicates that in the years to come a respective increase in number of requests for the registration of European patents in the Register for patents with the Office may be expected. For example, in 2008 the Office received 284 of such requests, towards 142 of such requests in previous year and only 21 in 2006 when only 21 such requests were received.
By technical field, the majority of the applications of non-resident applicants, directly filed with the Office, were filed in the IPC classes A61 (preparations for medical and dentistry purposes) and C07 (organic chemistry). Other IPC classes with significant number of non-resident applications in each class were A41 – A47 (household appliances and personal items), and classes B60 – B68 (vehicles in general and transporting).
The distribution of applications of resident applicants by technical field is almost unchanged compared to the previous years. The largest number of applications by resident applicants was filed in the following technical fields: B60 – B68 (vehicles in general and transporting), G01 – G12 (measuring), A61 (preparations for medical and dentistry purposes) 7,0 %; E01 – E06 (building and construction) and F01 – F04 (machines or engines).
By technical field, a majority of the valid patents have been in the IPC classes which are in compliance with the distribution by technical field of the filed patent applications.

The average number of international (PCT) applications was filed with the Office as the PCT Receiving office throughout last five years is 54.

At the end of 2008, a total of 1581 patents, 357 consensual (non-examined) patents and 302 extended European patents entered in the register of the Office were valid in the Republic of Croatia.

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

http://www.dziv.hr/en/default.aspx?pArtID=26&selection=3

Monthly official Gazette published on web pages of SIPO Croatia provides statistics:
http://www.dziv.hr/en/webcontent/file_library/inf_sources/glasnik_tablica.htm

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.)

Since the 2006 Official Gazette of the Office (joint Gazette including data on all types of industrial property) is published monthly on paper and on digital carrier (upon order), and current issue (but not archive) is available in electronic form free of charge on Office's web site (www.dziv.hr).
Official Gazette contains the following published information on patents: Patent Applications, Patent Claims Implementing Substantive Examination Procedure to Patent Applications, Patent Claims Pursuant to Substantive Examination Procedure Results of Patent Applications, Patent Claims Free of Substantive Examination Procedure to Patent Applications(Consensual Patents), Patents Granted, Consensual Patents Granted, Record of Changes to the Register of Patent Applications, Record of Changes to the Register of Patents, Lapse for Patents/Consensual Patents, Corrections of Data to Published Patent Applications, Requests for Extension to European Patent Applications, Revoked Requests for Extension to European Patent Application, Extended European Patents, Lapse for Extended European Patents, Corrections of Data to Published Extended European Patents.

http://www.dziv.hr/webcontent/file_library/izvori_inf/pdf/HGIV/Glasnici.asp

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

Office notices are published in the Official Gazette of the Office (paper form and on-line), as well as on the Office’s web site.
In the Official Gazette (HGIV – Hrvatski glasnik intelektualnog vlasništva) SIPO publishes announcements of issued patent documents (bibliographic data and abstracts), and published European patent applications with extended to Croatia (bibliographic data).

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

The bibliographic data are stored in Ingres 2.6 database and patent documents are stored in a LINUX network file directory.
The Office maintains a complete history of its patent files in paper form and all information for patent applied from 2000 to date in electronic form.

Word processing and office automation

All staff use MS-Word 2000 for word-processing that is operating in a Windows XP Professional environment. They also have their own personal workstation on which numerous applications are available. Most common office programs are available for everybody.

Outgoing letters and SIPO’s gazette are fully automated and generated in MS Word. It is also possible to generate numerous automated reports in MS Excel or MS Word.

(New) techniques used for the generation of patent information (printing, recording, photocomposing, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), etc.)

The bibliographic data are stored in the SIPO’s database via the application “Patent’s Register” (which is developed in INGRES OpenROAD application development tool). All patent documents and relevant images are stored on network discs in a doc and a pdf format (which are LINUX file directories).
Output documents and SIPO’s gazette are produced from automated MS Word templates.
Almost each outgoing letter is a MS Word template that consists of permanent text. Data, which are changeable and depend on application/publication number, are retrieved from the SIPO’s database via ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity).

All publishing data in SIPO's Gazette are formatted and followed by the INID codes according to the WIPO standards.

URLs of web pages of the Office’s website that provide access to online publication of patent documents and gazettes, and to other primary and secondary sources of patent information, including patent publication servers and download of bulk patent data

Current issue of the Office Gazette (joint Gazette including data on all types of industrial property) is available at:

http://www.dziv.hr/webcontent/file_library/izvori_inf/pdf/HGIV/Glasnici.asp

Free of charge searchable data base containing published information on patents applied for or granted is available at:

http://www.dziv.hr/DigitalLibrary/default.asp?izb=en

A range of search options is available, including: Publication Number; Title; Publication Date; IPC; Inventor; Applicant; Applicant(State); Title In English; Filing Date; Date And Number Of Earlier Application from the former FPO); Priority Number By State, Application Number And Application Date; International Filing Date; International Application Number; International Publication Date; International Publication Number; Attorney(Representative, Agent); Abstract.

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

Abstracting, reviewing, translating

Titles of all national applications are translated into English language and used for on-line database, offered by SIPO.

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)

Published patent applications and granted patents are classified by the Office according to the latest version of IPC advanced level.

The indexing schemes are not used by the examiners when classifying patent documents

The reclassification has been done regularly through the special tool developed in house. We use the content of the latest IPC Validity file (200901) for validating IPC symbols.

Bibliographic data and full-text processing

SIPO maintains on-line database containing bibliographic data and abstracts of all published patents in Croatian language. Up to now, there were no actions toward full-text processing.

IV. Search file establishment and upkeep

File building

Croatian search documents are sent to the EPO to be included into the EPO data systems. Examiners search national Register for national patent documentation. Outside customers can use Esp@cenet.

Updating

The search file is continuously developing and updating. Updates are sent monthly to the EPO.

Documentation from other offices maintained and/or considered part of the available search file

EPO’s Epoque-system is the main source of foreign documentation.

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

In-house systems (online/offline)

Patent search system is executed by electronic means. The database includes all national patent applications and granted patents, PCT, granted EP patents, and that is the only in-house system for searching.

External databases

The EPO develops and manages the patent search system esp@cenet (http://hr.espacenet.com). This system, which is public and available free of charge on the internet, contains some 65 million patent documents from 90 countries. SIPO makes hr.esp@cenet version available through its website and manages the Croatian texts. On the start page, the croatian help texts have been simplified and extended. A manual for performing searches in hr.esp@cenet was published in brochure form in 2008.

Administrative management systems (e.g., register, legal status, statistics and administrative support)

All applications are developed in INGRES OpenROAD. SIPO uses an INGRES database. An application “Patent’s Register” is used for filing all bibliographic data concerning the particular patent application or granted patent. All patent changes (change of ownership, change of name, address, etc.) are recorded and are maintained by patent Register user interface.

Since year 2000 SIPO has developed its own document management system in electronic form that covers office needs (all incoming and outgoing documents have been scanned in Adobe Acrobat).

MS Word is used for automatic generation of output documents. MS Excel is used for (automatic) generation of specific reports, which are used, for annual SIPO’s report, WIPO annual statistics and for other purposes (improving patent processes).

Published patent data (applications/grants) can be searched at the SIPO’s Internet site http://www.dziv.hr/digitallibrary through the SIPO's web-server application (MS Windows 2003 server and mySQL database).

Equipment used (hardware, including the types of terminal and network used, and software), carriers used

- 10Mbit/s leased line used for Internet connection, CISCO Network Equipment (LAN based on Fast Ethernet - 1000/100/10 Mbit/s).

- MICROSOFT environment:
- Servers: PC/WIN Server 2003 St. Ed. ; Fujitsu Siemens-Primergy RX 300/ Win SERVER 2003 St. Ed.
- Workstations: PC Pentium IV with WIN XP PROF. or WIN 2000 PROF.
- MS Exchange 2003 Server Enterprise, ISA 2004 ( proxy ).

- Linux ( SUSE Distribution - Enterprise Server 8 ) - two cluster application: database and file sharing. Two server nodes ( type of cluster is fail over ) on Fujitsu Siemens-Primergy RX 600 Servers. The cluster software is FujitsuSiemens Primecluster ver. 4.1 A30 for Linux.
- SAN (storage area network) connected with fiber channel switches to server nodes and backup device. SAN is
consists of two FiberCAT CX500 (EMC ) devices. Each of them has two-service processor and 10 disks in
RAID-5 system (9 x 146 Gb FC disks + 1 x 146 Gb FC hotspare disk).
- Backup software is Backbone NetVault 7.1. Backup device is a MTC – 9084-221 FC (tape library) with two LTO
2 tape drives and 21 slot tape robot connected to fiber channel switch. Also the library offers a mail slot for
exchanging offsite/onsite tapes. Total capacity installed on MTC library is 4 Tb of uncompressed data.

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 SIPO library is running by IP Information Centre-INCENTIV. The collections contain over 720 books, 62 Croatian and foreign periodicals available to the readers, all specialized in IP. The library is open to the public Monday to Friday from 8.00 am to 4.00 pm, except Thursday 10.00 am to 6.00 pm.
Close to the library is installed reading room.

Collection management, preservation

The unit called Incentiv is charged with the task of maintaining the library.

The books and periodicals are catalogued in the internal database which is listed in the intranet of the Office (available for the staff only).

Information services available to the public (including computerized services and search files contained in libraries remote from your Office and patent information posted by your Office on the World Wide Web)

Patent information services for the public are provided through the Office's Intellectual Property Information Center - INCENTIV (Patlib centre) providing (among others) information concerning patent applications filing, patent general legal matters, details of registration procedures, telephone queries, procedure information etc., and the public reading room where free of charge search of non-commercial patent information is available). Registry extracts, as well as copies of the file contents, are available upon written request and payable in advance. Information can be requested also by e-mail (info@dziv.hr). Commercial patent information search services (upon charge) by Office specialist are also available upon order.

During the 2008, SIPO implemented new free public access patent databases search, hr.esp@cenet which was promoted on universities and several national fairs, seminars and workshops, supported by hr.esp@cenet new brochure and leaflets.

General information on IP and related services:
INCENTIV – Intellectual Property Information Centre
Phone: +385 1 610 98 25; fax: +385 1 611 20 17; e-mail: info@dziv.hr
http://www.dziv.hr/webcontent/file_library/inf_usluge/Incentiv.htm

URLs of web pages of the Office's website for electronic filing of patent applications

Not applicable, no electronic filing of patent applications is available.

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.

All information available from:
http://www.dziv.hr/en/default.aspx?SectionID=9&selection=2 (in English)
http://www.dziv.hr/default.aspx?pArtID=177&selection=2 (in Croatian)

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

Information on Commercial Search Services:
http://www.dziv.hr/en/webcontent/file_library/inf_services/searching_serv_LNK.htm

Searchable free of charge Database:
http://www.dziv.hr/DigitalLibrary/default.asp?izb=en

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

SIPO regularly exchanges official gazettes (either in paper or on digital carrier) with 30+ industrial property offices around the world.

The Office sends monthly bibliographic and legal status information of patent applications and patents to EPO.

Medium used for exchange of priority documents

Priority documents can be exchanged only in paper form.

Medium allowed for filing applications

Applications can be filed in paper form only.

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)

Training courses for national and foreign participants, use of audiovisual means

Trainings organised in 2008:
• BIZImpact (for stakeholders of national IPR system)
• IP4INNO (Patents, Commercialization, Soft IP and Enforcement) (for future trainers for SMEs)
• Summer school on Intellectual Property, in collaboration with WIPO (academic institutions, R&D, young professionals)

SIPO also held several presentations on patent protection for domestic applicants, inventors and industry outside the Office premises.

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

SIPO, through INCENTIV promotion activities has been organizing seminars and workshops at university and national fairs to increase general IP knowledge in order to facilitate an efficient use of industrial property rights in the practical business and to inform future decision makers about the instruments of intellectual property.

SIPO Croatia participated in international specialized fairs as:
• IPI-ConfEx 2008, March 2008, Seville, Spain
• International fair of innovations, PALEXPO 2008, April, Geneve, Swiss
• PATLIB2008, May 2008, Warsaw

SIPO Croatia participated in specialized fairs in Croatia:
• 50th International crafts fair 2008, Zagreb fair, April 2008
• 4rd International fair of new technologies and products, Rijeka, April 2008.
• 1st fair of innovations, new ideas, products and technology in agriculture and foodstaff industry, AGRO-ARCA, 2008, May, Slatina
• 6th International fair of inventions, new technologies and products, ARCA 2008, Zagreb fair, September 2008.
• 13th International tool and equipment fair, SASO 2008, Split, October 2008.
• 33rd Croatian salon of innovations with international participation, INOVA 2008, Zagreb fair, November

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

http://www.dziv.hr/en/default.aspx?pArtID=58&selection=5

contain the Annual Report of the Office

http://www.dziv.hr/en/default.aspx?pArtID=6&selection=0

contain patent-related news regarding the Office

News are available at the Office web site on the “news page” http://www.dziv.hr/

X. Other relevant matters