Annual Technical Report 2012 on Patent Information Activities submitted by Israel (CWS/ATR/PI/2012/IL)
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.
The term "patent" covers utility models and Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs). Offices which issue design patents should report their design patent information activities in their Annual Technical Reports on Industrial Design Information Activities.
I. Evolution of patent activities
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The number of accelerated examinations of patent applications has increased continuously.
Since June 2012, the ILPO has started operating as an International Authority (IA) for Searching and Preliminary Examination of international applications. In 2012, more than 52% of the international applications of Israeli applicants designated the ILPO as IA.
In August 2012 amendment no. 10 of the Patents Law came into force. This amendment has many implications on the operations of the ILPO and primarily with regards to the opening of Patent file-wrappers to public review as of 18 months following date of priority (until this amendment of the law file wrappers were privileged until date of acceptance). By enacting this order of transparency Israel has joined the accepted standard in this regard around the world. The review of the file wrappers is enabled at the ILPO'S website free of charge. To this end the ILPO conducted in 2012 a special project in which about 35,000 file-wrappers were scanned. Following the project, the patent department (both substantive and formality examiners) started working in a paperless environment. The Patent Formalities Department started taking charge of scanning all the incoming documents.
URLs of web pages of the Office’s website that provide statistics related to patents
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Office Notices and Commissioner Circulars regarding changes in Office procedures are published on the ILPO website.
www.patents.gov.il
Mass storage media used (paper, microforms, optical storage, etc.)
All the electronic files of the patent applications (including bibliographic data, description, claims, drawings since 1970) and the incoming/outgoing correspondence (since 2012) are stored in the servers of the Ministry of Justice. In addition, all the documents in hard copy are still maintained in an external archive.
Word processing and office automation
Word processing and office automation
The current ILPO system was developed in the Microsoft .Net environment with Client/Server architecture using a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database.
The ILPO patent examiners are equipped with workstations with the Windows 7 Operating System and the Windows 2008 Server. Each workstation is connected to the Citrix virtual environment and has a CD-ROM drive and Internet access through a high-speed connection. This provides patent examiners with the necessary facilities to conduct their S&E functions.
The ILPO implemented many international standards for improving efficiency, availability, flexibility, scalability and manageability of its systems.
The ILPO's Service Management implements the ITIL Standard (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. The ILPO adopted a disaster recovery policy and has implemented GeoCluster which protects the organization from equipment failures, power outages and natural disasters.
The ILPO's Server farm contains HP Blade servers that are managed under VMware which provides a completely virtualized set of hardware. Its website operates on a very high data security level, using several firewalls and strict security policy.
Concerning the examination of international applications, the ILPO has developed a modern and efficient automation system entitled PCT SAPIA (System for Administration and Processing of International Applications) to handle the processing of international applications electronically and to provide automatic quality checking of the formality examination at the RO stage as well as the formality and substantive examination at the ISA and IPEA stages. This system implements a full scale of automated validations and guidance for the examiner (including warnings for nonconforming cases), thus preventing him from making mistakes and ensuring integrity of the reports, and sends alerts to the division directors in cases where the due dates are not met. This system provides electronic sampling of 100% of the applications.
The business rules implemented in this system are designed to ensure the integrity and quality of the international reports produced electronically as well as work efficiency.
(New) techniques used for the generation of patent information (printing, recording, photocomposing, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), etc.)
Optical character recognition of scanned documents.
URLs of web pages of the Office’s website that provide access to online publication of patent documents and gazettes, and to other primary and secondary sources of patent information, including patent publication servers and download of bulk patent data
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THOMSON INNOVATION
Derwent World Patent Index (DWPI)
STN International databases
EPOQUE-NET
QUESTEL
Administrative management systems (e.g., register, legal status, statistics and administrative support)
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http://www.ilpatsearch.justice.gov.il/UI/MainPage.aspx
URLs of web pages of the Office’s website that provide a description of information products and services offered by the Office (e.g., patent search service(s) and patent databases), as well as information on how to access and utilize them
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X. 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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