Annual Technical Report 2005 on Trademark Information Activities submitted by Australia (SCIT/ATR/TM/2005/AU)
Where URLs are requested below, it is preferred that either URLs which are likely to remain stable over time (three years or more) are provided, or home (main) page URLs are provided with a short explanation of how to access the corresponding information.
I. Evolution of registration activities
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(Please Note: AU provides for multi-class filings. Figures below are in classes)
Applications:
2004 - 85462
2005 - 93146
8.9% increase – continuing upward trend
Registrations:
2004 – 53605
2005 - 62204
16.0% increase – continuing upward trend
Madrid – International Registrations Designating Australia
2004 – 5582
2005 - 7846
40.5% increase – continuing upward trend
Trends or areas experiencing rapid changes with respect to the previous year
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The Australian Official Journal of Trade Marks (the trade mark gazette) is published weekly. There are 50 issues per year - the Easter and Christmas weeks being excluded. The Journal is available on-line, free of charge, via the IP Australia internet site and contains both bibliographic text, and images. Hard copy journal publication has been discontinued.
Standard Notices and Letters are produced via the Trade Marks mainframe business application as XEROX XICS output.
Examination Reports are generated in Word.
Main types of announcements of the Office in the field of trademark information
The Official Journal contains the following announcements:
Applications Filed
Applications Accepted for Registration
Amendments and Changes
Applications Lapsed Withdrawn and Refused
Trade Marks Registered
Assignment, Transmittals and Transfers
Cancellation of Entries in Register
Renewal of Registration of Trade Marks
Opposition Proceedings
Removal for Non-use Proceedings
Notices
The IP Australia web-site also provides access to a variety of forms and publications, IP legislations, Official Notices, Hearings Decisions, manuals, etc.
Mass storage media and microforms used
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Australia classifies goods and services according to Nice Version 8.
Australia does not use the Vienna Classification scheme to classify the figurative elements of marks. Rather figurative elements are classified (and searched) according to a thesaurus of device terms developed by the Office. For example, the WIPO device is indexed as follows:
1 ANNULUS 2 CONCENTRIC
3 HAND 4 PEN
5 BOOK,OPEN 6 GRAIN,EAR
7 VIOLIN 8 WHEEL,GEAR
9 MUSICAL-INSTRUMENT 10 CIRCLE+
11 ROUND 12 ROUND+
Each device term may then be used as a search criteria, either singularly or in combination, in order to locate marks with similar device characteristics.
Use of electronic classification systems to check the classification symbols furnished by an applicant and which are contained in the lists of goods and/or services
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As mentioned previously, the primary business system is the ADABAS Natural mainframe application, TMARK, running on IBM zOS. TMARK interfaces to a number of satellite applications, eg Word for production of reports, XICS for publishing output, a couple of mid-range applications for EDI under the Madrid Protocol, an automated data capture utility (ADC) for capturing data received electronically, and ATMOSS. Document management is handled via TRACS.
All processing relating to the life-cycle of a trade mark (apart from financial processing) is conducted within this environment. The Trade Mark Office, along with the Patent and Design Offices in IP Australia is in the process of transitioning our business applications from the mainframe to our strategic server infrastructure environment. This environment includes Sun Solaris, Oracle RDBMS, J2EE, BEA Weblogic, and Objective EDMS.
Equipment used (hardware, including the types of terminal and network used, and software), carriers used
The Canberra Office has an ethernet-based LAN providing high speed bandwidth for each user desktop connection. A frame relay-based WAN provides connections from Canberra to each State Capital. A DMZ-based, DSD approved firewall using IAN ports (Internet IEFT Assigned Numbers) provides the secure means to allow access from internal systems/users to external entities such as the Internet or public/private organisations.
The current SOE includes Windows XP with Office SE 2003, IE 6.0 SP1, and Lotus Notes.
VI. Administration of trademark services available to the public (relating to facilities, e.g., for lodging applications, registering trademarks, assisting clients with search procedures, obtaining official publications and registry extracts)
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26 – 29 January - IP Australia attended the WTO Trips workshop for Forum Island Countries (FICs) and led discussions on IP developments in the Pacific, Suva, Fiji.
17 March - Visit by the Director General of the Intellectual Property Office of Indonesian for discussions on capacity building programs.
18-22 April - IP Australia conducted a visit to Samoa & Tonga under the AusAID Pacific Governance Support Program for discussions on IP development in the Pacific.
1-6 May - IP Australia conducted a visit to Fiji & Vanuatu under the AusAID Pacific Governance Support Program for discussions on IP development in the Pacific.
16-22 May - IP Australia conducted a visit to Fiji & Kiribati under the AusAID Pacific Governance Support Program for discussions on IP development in the Pacific.
30 May-2 June - IP Australia conducted a visit to PNG under the AusAID Pacific Governance Support Program for discussions on IP development in the Pacific.
7-16 July - As part of the APEC TILF funded PE&A Program, TILF II Project, a scoping visit to Chile and Mexico was undertaken.
31 July - 6 Aug - A delegation of Chinese IP Experts from the Singapore Intellectual Property Office, conducted seminars in Sydney and Melbourne on ‘Protecting & Enforcing IP in China’. The delegation also discussed FTA related issues with IP Australia and DFAT officers.
15 Sept - IPA hosted a delegation from the Australian Technical Experts Network (ATEN) led by Deputy Department Director of Patent Bureau, SIPO for comparative discussions on AU & China’s IP systems.
25-27 Oct - IP Australia co-sponsored and gave presentations at the ASEAN-USPTO workshop on intellectual property office administration and enforcement, Bangkok.
9-11 Nov - Asia Pacific IP Forum, New Zealand. This forum focussed on operational issues for IP Offices. IP Australia gave several presentations at the Forum.
5 Dec - IP Australia hosted high level delegation from the Vietnamese Ministry of Trade to better understand Australia’s IP rights protection system
5 Dec - IP Australia hosted Korean IP Office delegation to discuss approach to patent and trade mark hearings and operational functions
IX. Other relevant matters