...
Patents
There were 453 patent applications filed in 2004 that is decrease by 72.5 % in comparison with the year 2003. 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 44.2 % (200) of all applications. At the same time, the number of PCT applications grew by 16.2 % to the figure of 99 053, in which the Slovak Republic is the designated country. The total number of patent applications filed by domestic applicants increased by 1 %. The largest share in the number of patent application filed by foreign applicants (238) have the USA (58), the Czech Republic (32) and Germany (24).
In the year 2004, three European applications were filed.
555 patents were granted that is a decrease by 14.9 % in comparison with the year 2003.
There were 11 application of SPC’s filed in 2004. All of them are from foreign applicants, the most number is from the USA - 4 applications. There were 9 SPC's granted.
On December 31, 2004 there were 4,037 valid patents in the Slovak Republic.
Utility models
There were 348 utility model applications filed in the Office in 2004. This number has increased by 3 % in comparison with the previous year. Similarly, the number of applications filed by the Slovak applicants increased by 4.1 % (282 applications). The share of the Slovak applicants in total number of 348 applications is 81 %. A greater growth occurred in number of registered utility models (358). Increase by 31.1 % is mainly caused by domestic applicants which creates 76.5 % of all applicants.
A significant increase 33.3 % has been recorded in the number of registered utility models of foreign applicants.
On December 31, 2004 there were 1,761 valid utility models in the Slovak Republic.
In comparison with the statistics of the years 1999 - 2004, there are following results in patent and in utility model area:
patents_tab.doc - Statistical data of patents models_tab.doc - Statistical data of utility models
...