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In 2013 strategy of the Office´s activities by 2016 was adopted. It contains inter alia activities in the patent information area:
- To To prepare the draft of the conception of the Office´s information services development by 2016 in accordance with the Strategic Plan of the Office;
- To To identify the WIPO standards related to public services and data providing which are not or are partially implemented at the Office and to prepare the proposal for their implementation with the publication of their content in Slovak language for public;
- To To prepare the proposal for implementation of new standardised processes and outputs of the Office related to provided services;
- To To prepare the proposal for implementation of new and modification of existing public services of the Office;
- To To implement a new complex package of public services with relevant information materials and documents.
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This cooperation resulted in agreements of the offices on common practice in publishing announcements of the Office on its main page such as joint announcements related to:- Procedure
- Procedure for assessing the likelihood of confusion (relative grounds), where the common elements of the signs in question have no or weak distinctive character
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- Procedure for determining the acceptability of terms for classification (set of criteria contained in this procedure helps to determine whether a term included in the list of goods and services of a trade mark application is in terms of classification sufficiently clear and precise)
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- Judgments of the Court of Justice - calls for harmonized interpretations of the general indications of class headings of the Nice classification
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- Procedure for assessing the scope of protection of black and white trade marks and trade marks in the gray-scale and so on.
In 2015 the project CP3 was successfully completed by adopting Common Communication on the Common Practice of Distinctiveness – Figurative Marks containing descriptive/non-distinctive words in the attached forms or combined signs containing descriptive words/words without distinctive character, which has been applied in the Slovak Republic from December 1, 2015.
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In case of processing non-traditional marks, the Office receives three-dimensional marks and colorful signs, which shall be within the application processed in two-dimensional representation.
Other activities
Information Centre
http://www.upv.sk/?information-centre
The Information Centre provided the clients of the Office with general information on IP protection for individual subject matters, on filing applications and related administration fees. Within the consultations also information on IP protection in the Slovak Republic and also abroad were provided (European patent, international application filed under PCT).
The information were provided personally, by phone (+421 48 4300 131), by post and e-mail address infocentrum@indprop.gov.sk.
In 2015 the Information Centre dealt with 7.903 requests for information; 6.128 thereof were provided by phone, 1.528 by e-mail, 245 personally and 2 by post.
Pre-diagnostics of industrial property rights
http://www.upv.sk/?prediagnostika-priemyselnych-prav
To increase the IP awareness, to support innovations, creativity and competitiveness of small and middle-sized enterprises is a primary goal of the IP pre-diagnostics, which have been provided by the IPO SR experts since 2008. During 2015 the Office employees visited 30 companies in Slovakia. The most of them were from the self-governing regions of Bratislava (11), Banská Bystrica (6) and Nitra (4).
Workplace of the IPO SR in Bratislava
Workplace of the Office, which was opened in 2004 offered information relating to filing applications for industrial property rights subjects last year. In the workplace, there is a filing room.
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- Registered trade marks database of the IPO CZ, coverage: CZ
-WIPO WIPO Gazette of International Marks, coverage: worldwide
-WIPO WIPO International Trade mark Information Database ROMARIN, coverage: worldwide
-OHIM OHIM/EUIPO Community Trade marks Database accessible via e-search at the OHIM/ EUIPO portal, coverage: EUTM applications
-National National database USPTO, coverage US
-National National database IPO UK, coverage GB
- research Research system TMview, coverage: OHIM/ EUIPO, WIPO and national databases of certain EU countries and also outside EU (coverage changes by the access of other countries)
-System on searching and classification of goods and services TMclass
-WIPO WIPO Global Brand Database - link: http://www.wipo.int/reference/en/branddb/, coverage: worldwide
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In 2015, the Office’s reading room has been visited by 559 users. In total there were provided 2 728 borrowings of patent and other literature made available to the public and 880 copies of patent documents and other industrial property 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 2015 there were performed 484 trade mark searches and 31 searches on bibliographic data.
The Office’s reading room serves as a WIPO deposit library as well. The deposit library fund includes 257 volumes of publications issued by WIPO, which are available for study in reading room.
The Office’s reading room including the search workstation opens daily from 9:00 to 15:00.
In 2015, within the frame of mutual exchange of industrial-property information, the IPO SR continued in receiving of trade mark information in the form of official gazettes. Non-patent literature was acquired mostly by purchase or as a gift and processed, stored according to librarian rules and made available via in-house database system “Knižnica” to the staff.
Patent Information Centres and Contact and Information Points
Since 2003 the Office has established 10 contact and information points, while four of them are the Patent Information Centres. They are located in state, regional and district libraries as well as in the Slovak National Library (SNK) in Martin and Centre of Scientific and Technical Information (CVTI) in Bratislava. A list of centres and points is available on the Office’s web site http://www.upv.sk/?partners.
The main goal of patent information centres is to provide complex information services in the field of patent, trade mark and industrial design information, search services, consultation and methodical assistance concerning the searching of information, making copies of required patent documents, printing records from electronic form etc. Every patent information centre serve as a contact and information point.
The main goal of contact and information points of the Office is to inform the public about where can apply for protection of the results of creative activity, and particularly to inform the general public about the existence of the national institution, which protects immaterial goods, industrial property.
The Office supported the activity of centres and contact and information points by regular sending Slovak patent specifications in paper form and the Official Gazette in electronic form, as well as all information materials and recourses made available to the public, publications published by Office, information pamphlets, documents and forms relating to applying for protection of industrial property rights, access to offices databases via Internet etc.
Information and Advisory Points for Innovations (InnoInfo)
The role of thirteen INNOINFOs working in Slovak regions is to orientate particularly SMEs in IP protection. INNOINFOs are placed in business incubators (Incubator Malacky and BIC Bratislava, spol. s r.o.), regional information and advisory centres – RPIC Komárno, Poprad and Prešov, regional chambers of the Slovak Chamber of Commerce and Industry and at technical universities – Technical University of Košice, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava and Institute for Competitiveness and Innovations, University in Žilina.
Four regional chambers of SCCI – Bratislava, Trenčín, Banská Bystrica and Košice – are the IPO SR partners within INNOINFO. Active cooperation of the IPO SR has been launched also with other regional chambers which are not included in the net but they showed an interest to become a part of it in future. These are RC SCCI in Trnava, Žilina and Prešov.
The first phase of cooperation is focused on providing partners with promotional and expert publications and contact persons training. During the second phase the trained persons provide consultations to SMEs how to distinguish and to protect the intellectual potential. They participate in organising seminars aimed at IP issues with the IPO SR experts as the lecturers.
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The Office publishes classifications, miscellanies, expert monographs, acts and related commentaries, promotional and information brochures, leaflets or translations of the WIPO and the EPO original publications providing valuable information on industrial property field to public.
Publication activities of the Office during 2015 include:
• Annual Report of the Industrial Property Office of SR 2014 – for the fifth time in electronic CD version. Also the web version of the Annual Report 2014 is available on the website www.upv.sk;
• The magazine Duševné Vlastníctvo 1 – 4/2015 in the electronic version and the fifth edition in printed version; printed version of Duševné Vlastníctvo – Selection 2015 consisted of the core author articles supplemented with the category From Decisions of the IPO SR and From the Gallery of Creators.
For more information please see the list of publications issued by the Office http://www.upv.sk/?publikacie
WEBSITE OF THE OFFICE – www.upv.sk
The website of the Office allows the public to access quickly and conveniently to information and databases relating to IP. Selected data from the registers of patents, utility models, industrial designs and trade marks are updated at regular daily intervals (except EP). The website in Slovak and English versions also publishes information about upcoming conferences, seminars and other events. The website of the Office thus became not only the most complete source of information but also an effective means of communication to the public.
The number of visitors of the website proves the interest of public in such form of communication. On weekdays, the average number of accesses was 453; 215 during weekends, the year 2015 together amounted to 125,000 accesses. Every eighth visitor of the Office´s website regularly returns and about 52 per cent accessed the website using the favourites bar or directly by writing the address without using a searching tool. The most visited sub-pages were:
- trade marks (121,917 accesses);
- patents (64,044);
- registers and databases (40,383);
- utility models (18,348);
- and designs with 11,133 accesses.
65.38 per cent of visits were from Slovakia, 6.01 per cent from the Czech Republic and the rest 28.61 per cent from other countries.
PORTALS www.patentovat.sk a and FACEBOOK
In addition to the official website, the Office maintains the popularisation web portal www.patentovat.sk, linked to the social network Facebook. The site was renamed to The Industrial Property Office of SR - patentovat.sk to be searched better, which was positively reflected in the increased number of its supporters. In addition to the promotion of IP it serves as a contact point for public seeking necessary information and specific services of the Office.In 2015 the number of visitors and fans of Facebook site increased by 100; there were almost 300 fans in the end of the year.
PORTAL http://www.dusevnevlastnictvo.gov.sk/
In the end of 2015 in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture of SR the portal http://www.dusevnevlastnictvo.gov.sk/ was restored and made available again on December 15, 2015.
Information portal is a digital platform to get basic information on IP subject matters. It provides information on copyright and related rights, on IP rights, law against unfair competition and also information on legal regulation of trade names, trade secret and know-how.
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Module A – Intellectual Property and Copyright Basics;
Module B – Creativity – its Management, Marketing and Economics;
Module C – Information in the Field of Intellectual Property.
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