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New projects launched or resumed this year in the context of the policies and plans mentioned above, short description: aims, partners, tasks
The Office engages in various co-operation and training activities as a participant in the European Patent Network which is supported by the European Patent Office (EPO). In 2017, the Office continued a “Quality at source” project to ensure standardized patent data information exchange (for inclusion in Espacenet) in compliance with EPO XML formats and WIPO standards. This project will allow us to firstly, establish a standardized front file delivery of patent data and secondly, collect missing back file patent data from 1973 to date in digital format covering bibliographic, image and full-text data (when the quality of the original document allows it).
The Office commenced a project to develop e-filing for Patents and Supplementary Protection Certificates (having introduced e-filing of trade mark applications in 2014 and design e-filing in 2015). This involves the development of a new structured user front end system, hosted on the Patents office website, and a complex redesign of the current administrative software system (Ptolemy) to facilitate a paperless Office
The Office has also developed a ‘Patent Specification Template Tool’ which will assist applicants (unrepresented by an Agent) to complete and fully understand the requirements of a patent application to be filed. It will produce four fully detailed specification sections to be filed electronically at the Office. These two projects have been commenced simultaneously and are predicted to have a go-live date of late 2018.
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https://epayment.patentsoffice.ie
Other business practices and procedures are covered by web pages accessible from the main patents page: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Patents
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From 2012 the Patents Office Journal became searchable online with full patent document retrieval, and links to Espacenet for EP designating Ireland documents. The HTML version was also modified to allow full bibliographic data access and document retrieval.
(3) ESPACENET, EPOQUE etc.
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Copies of information booklets; other national office annual reports; IP legislation; previous copies of the IPC; guides to IP Law; patent case law reports; scientific journals and magazines, etc. are stored in our main information centre.
Our office is open to the public five days a week, where users can file applications, perform searches on our National Patent database, Espacenet, and/or Patentscope, peruse available booklets/journals or avail of an IP clinic with an examiner for pre-filing advice.
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This data is complete for all Irish national applications and granted patents in force.
Nothing to report.
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Remote access to the full range of required tools and software is possible for the staff using Citrix remote access software.
Hardware used to supporting business processes of the Office
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All patent documents (published patent applications, granted patents) are stored both in a back server (for integration into the PTOLEMY software system) and a web publication server (for display on the patents office website). These servers are accessed by different software tools (our Document Import Tool/PTOLEMY and our Patent Database Search system).
The SPC Database Search, available on our website, provides information on all published SPC information via the bibliographic data, product type and product identity.
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The Irish Office continues to have an informal programme of cooperation with various countries, including a number of developing countries.
Nothing further to report.
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