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In 2002, the Office received 1,858 patent applications. The decrease in the number of applications by 84 when compared with the past year is the decrease by 4,3 %. The PCT applications form 79.9 % of all applications. At the same time, the number of PTC applications grew by 7 % to the figure of 78,097, in which SR is the designated country. The growth in the number of patent applications from the Slovak applicants by 13 (+5.26 %) to the figure of 260 may be considered appropriate with regard to the activities of the Office aimed at the support of creativeness. The largest share in the number of 1,598 patent application from abroad have Germany (424), USA (330) and France (115).
The significant decline of the registered patents has been due to the fact, that the Act No. 435/2001, effective from November 1, 2001, following its original legislative text, could cause complications after granting patents in connection with request for industrial applicability as a criteria of the patentability. Consequently the amendment Act No. 402/2002 of the Act No. 435/2001 that came into force on August 1, 2002 has removed possible problems.
By December 31, 2002 there were 4,019 valid patents in SR.
During the year 2002, the number of utility models applications increased by 3 %. Similarly, the number of applications filed by the Slovak applicants increased by 5.4 %. The share of the Slovak applicants in the total number of 377 filed applications for utility models in one year is 78.3 %. Around 19 % applications were from the Czech Republic, which confirmed the long-term trend in the decrease of applicants from the nearest neighbour country. A greater drop occurred in the number of registered utility models. A decrease of 12.2 % is mainly caused by domestic applicants who represent 78.2 % of all applicants. Moreover, more than 36 % registered utility models are from the branch of civil engineering and transport, fewer from general engineering, personal and domestic articles, amusement and foodstuffs.
By December 31, 2002, there were 1,800 valid utility models in the Slovak Republic.
Patent and utility models application procedure without changes.
II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, distribution and use of primary and secondary sources of patent information
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Main types of official publications:
Vestník ÚPV SR
patent documents (according to the WIPO ST.16):
- published patent applications A3
- patent specifications B6
- corrections of patent documents A8, A9, B8, B9, U8, U9
Patents and utility models information forms part of the Official Gazette -
“ Vestník ÚPV SR”, covering all industrial property rights in one publication. Paper form issued monthly is published in standard size A4, paperback and usually in cca 300 pages. In 2002, the Gazette had a circulation of 250 copies, of which 128 were distributed by subscription. The electronic form of the Official Gazette is available to the public on the Internet, free of charge, and contains searchable data.
The following number of documents were published in the Official Gazette in 2002:
Patent applications 1876
Patent specifications 593
Utility models 303
Distribution
The Office distributed Slovak patent specifications to six regional libraries to build the territorial fund of the national patent documentation and to the IPO ČR within the framework of exchange as well. Slovak patents published on ESPACE - PRECES CD-ROM are being distributed by the Hungarian Patent Office to foreign patent offices within the framework of mutual patent information exchange. The Official Gazette “Vestník ÚPV SR” has been distributed within the framework of mutual exchange to 32 countries, including to organizations such as EPO and WIPO, last year.
Main types of announcements of the Office in the field of patent information
The Gazette contains patent announcements arranged in the following main chapters:
- list of published patent applications (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data and abstracts of published patent applications with an image, where available (arranged according to the International Patent Classification)
- list of granted patents (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of granted patents (arranged according to the International Patent Classification)
- list of registered utility models (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of registered utility models (arranged according to the
International Patent Classification)
- official decisions (revocation, cancellation, etc.)
- assignments of rights and other changes of owners
- extension of the term of validity of the utility models registration
- licence contract registered in the register
- the right of lien
Mass storage media used (paper, microforms, optical storage, etc.)
Patent documents are available in paper form in the Office’s library and, in addition, patent specifications are available also in electronic form in the Office’s web site as well as on ESPACE - PRECES CD-ROM (Patents from the Region of Eastern and Central European States). As an index to this fulltext CD-ROM, the ESPACE ACCESS PRECES (complete bibliographic information) is used.
Word processing and office automation
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MS Office 97, QuarkXpress 4.1 for Windows and Corel Draw 10, Photoshop 6.0, FineReader 5.0, Adobe Acrobat 5.05 CE, SLEX99 – Lexicon of Slovak Language are used for the data processing; the photocomposing and printing is carried out by the Office.
The Desk-Top Publishing technology is used for data and image inputs processing for the Gazette and first pages of the patent documents.
III. Matters concerning abstracting, classifying, reclassifying and indexing of technical information contained in patent documents
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Abstracts printed on the first pages of patent documents as well as a part of official announcements are revised and in case of need corrected by the Office’s experts before publication of application. Abstracts appear only in case of patent application publications in the Official Gazette. The English translation of abstracts are being sent to the EPIDOS for the ESPACE PRECES CD-ROM production.
Classification and reclassification 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)
The applications are classified and reclassified by office´s experts according to the International Patent Classification - Int.Cl.7. The WIPO Standards ST.8 and ST.10/C are also used for these purposes. Reclassifying is carried out before granting of patent.
Hybrid system indexing
For indexing of technical information contained in patent documents the hybrid system of the IPC are used.
Bibliographic data and full-text processing for search purposes
The WIPO Standard ST. 9 is used for patent and utility model bibliographic data coding in all relevant outcomes or records. All bibliographic data are being processed in electronic database form. The fully searchable data are updated and made available to the public each 15 minutes in the Internet.
IV. Search file establishment and upkeep
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The patent documentation search file used by the patent examiners and the technical public contains patent documents from 24 countries, the EPO and the WIPO, patent gazettes from 33 countries, including the EPO and the WIPO and the non-patent literature (55 titles technical periodicals and 7167 titles special monographies).
Updating
Updating of patent documentation search file is performed regularly according to current technical possibilities.
Storage, including mass storage media
The basis of the patent fund forms the collection stored on the paper medium (cca 10 millions). However, the majority of the patent documentation is currently received on electronic carriers. In 2002, the total number of optical discs collection exceeded the limit 9,000 and the regular annual accession reached the figure of 1,000.
Documentation from other offices maintained and/or considered part of the available search file
In 2002, within the frame of mutual exchange, the IPO SR received patent and utility model gazettes from the following states and organizations: AT, AU, BA, BG, BR, CH, CZ, DE, EE, EG, ES, FI, FR, GB, GE, HR, HU, KG, LT, LV, MD, MK, NO, PL, PT, RO, RU, Sl, SM, UA, US, EPO a WIPO.
IPO SR is maintaining the patent documentation collection stored in paper form, which forms the basis of search files, within the range:
- from 1950 to 1990: the documentation DD (from 1958), DE (from 1951), CH (from 1944), FR (from 1945), GB (from 1967), PL (from 1963), SU (from 1941), US (from 1960) and the documentation EPO (from 1978) a WIPO (from 1978)
- from 1919 to the present: national documentation SK and formal CS
- from 1993 to the present: national documentation CZ
V. Activities in the field of computerized and other mechanized search systems
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The Office is keeping and creating a national search database on granted patents, published patent applications and registered utility models; nowadays, selected data are also available through Internet.
It is possible to carry out searches according to bibliographic data in all the databases used for granted patents, published patent applications and registered utility models.
Following search CD-ROM are used through the local CD-ROM network by the
Ultranet 2000 system:
ESPACE - ACCESS EP - A
ESPACE - ACCESS EP - B
ESPACE – ACCESS - EUROPE
ESPACE – ACCESS - PRECES
ESPACE – ACCESS - RUSSIA
ESPACE – BULLETIN
PCT Gazette
GLOBALPAT
PAJ
ESPACE - LEGAL
IPC CLASS 2000
WIPO Handbook
legal and economic information, encyclopedia and statistics
External databases
Searches carried out in the STN on-line service, access to DERWENT, INPADOC, CAS and the like databases.
Using the ESPACENET Internet database and other free available databases of the national offices (e.g. Czech patent and utility models database) and WIPO.
Administrative management systems (e.g., register, legal status, statistics, administrative support, etc.)
The Office automation management system contains patent and utility models registry
(data since 1993 – patents, data since 1992 – utility models, ) using “INVENTIO” software.
Administrative management system based on Lotus Domino.
Equipment used (hardware, including the types of terminal and network used, and software), carriers used
Equipment used:
Fast ETHERNET 1000/10/10 Mbit/s, WINDOWS NT 4.0, 2000 for servers; workstations PC Pentium, Windows 95, NT 4.0 and 2000; HP Unix for database, Informix Dynamic Server 9.21
VI. Administration of the industrial property office library 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)
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In 2002, the office’s reading room was visited by 1,801 users, 1,161 of which were from the public. In total, there were provided 9,982 borrowings of patent and other literature made available to the public and 29,954 copies of patent documents for the manual and computer search purposes, as well as copies from technical periodicals and other associated and non-patent literature were made. In 2002, 407 patent searches, 2,831 trademark searches and 38 design searches were performed, based on 1,183 written and 209 in-person requests.
The office’s reading room including the search workstation opens daily from 7:30 to 15:00 except Wednesday (8:00-16:00).
All online sevices and other basic information are available via the Internet address of IPO SR: www.upv.sk.
Collecting, acquisitions, preparation
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Network of patent libraries in the Slovak Republic comprises of 6 regional libraries (patent information centers). In 2002 the regional libraries received regularly from IPO Slovak patent specifications in paper also on optical discs (fulltext CD-ROM ESPACE PRECES, bibliographic data thereof on ESPACE ACCESS PRECES ) as well as announcements concerning industrial property right in the Official Gazette form. The relationship between the IPO and libraries is determinated by particular agreements concerning the building of the patent documents fund.
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)
The library provides the following services to the public:
- lending service (patent documents, Gazettes) in the reading room
- reprographic services upon request or on the place
- sale of special monographies and periodical publications (“Intellectual Property”, “Vestník ÚPV SR”)
- interlibrary lending service (regional libraries)
- international interlibrary lending service
- searches: state of the art, patent families, bibliographic data; monitoring of the state of selected technical fields upon request (permanent sending of documents)
- CD-ROM workstations available in the reading room
- methodical and consultation assistance for the public
Patent information on the World Wide Web:
- general information
- information about Office activities (seminars, training courses, etc.)
- application guide and forms
- relevant laws
- Annual Reports
- selected registry data
- patent specifications (meanwhile since 1993)
- Official Gazette
- order forms (searches, non-patent literature)
- products and services
- IPC (7-th edition)
VII. Matters concerning mutual exchange of patent documentation and information
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Regional co-operation
In 2002, IPO SR continued in participation in the joint ESPACE PRECES CD-ROM project (patent specifications of BG, CZ, HU, LT, LV, PL, RO and SK).
International co-operation
Bibliographic data and abstracts of the published patent applications and granted patents in English were supplied to the EPIDOS database in electronic form.
In 2002, the mutual exchange of patent documentation and official gazettes between the IPO SR and other offices also international organizations, including the EPO and the WIPO, continued.
Medium used for exchange of priority documents
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The IPO SR fully accepted change-over to electronic data carriers. The exchange of the patent documents in paper form was terminated by the end of 2000. Beginning from 2001 the IPO has been realizing the exchange of patent documents only on electronic data carriers.
VIII. Other relevant matters concerning education and training in, and promotion of, the use of patent information, including technical assistance to developing countries
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IX. Other relevant matters
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| 1. | Classification is allotting one or more classification symbols (e.g., IPC symbols) to a patent application, either before or during search and examination, which symbols are then published with the patent application.
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| 2. | Preclassification is allotting an initial broad classification symbol (e.g., IPC class or subclass, or administrative unit) to a patent application, using human or automated means for internal administrative purposes (e.g., routing an application to the appropriate examiner). Usually preclassification is applied by the administration of an office.
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| 3. | Reclassification is the reconsideration and usually the replacement of one or more previously allotted classification symbols to a patent document, following a revision and the entry into force of a new version of the Classification system (e.g., the IPC). The new symbols are available on patent databases.
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