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Patents
There were 250 patent applications filed in 2005 that is decrease by 44,8 % in comparison with the year 2004. Decrease in the number of patent applications is connected with accession of the Slovak republic to the European Patent Convention (most of the applicants using the PCT system for filing of patent applications prefers the possibility to protect their inventions by the European patent in the territory of the Slovak Republic since July 1, 2002). The PCT applications form 22,4 % (56) of all applications.
The largest share in the number of patent application filed by foreign applicants (95) have the Czech Republic (33), the USA (25), and Germany (9).
In the year 2005, two European applications were filed.
560 patents were granted that is an increase by 0,9 % in comparison with the year 2004.
There were 14 application of SPC’s filed in 2005. All of them are from foreign applicants, the most number is from Great Britain - 4 and from Germany - 4 applications. There were 13 SPC's granted.
On December 31, 2005 there were 4.149 valid patents in the Slovak Republic.
Utility models
There were 377 utility model applications filed in the Office in 2005. This number has increased by 8,3 % in comparison with the previous year. Similarly, the number of applications filed by the Slovak applicants decreased by 1,4 % (278 applications). The share of the Slovak applicants in total number of 377 applications is 73,7 %. Decrease of 13,4 % occurred in number of registered utility models (310).
On December 31, 2005 there were 1.795 valid utility models in the Slovak Republic.
In comparison with the statistics of the years 1999 - 2005, there are following results in patent and utility model area:
Trends or areas experiencing rapid changes with respect to the previous year
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