Annual Technical Report 2003 on Trademark Information Activities submitted by Georgia (SCIT/ATR/TM/2003/GE)
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I. Evolution of registration activities
2,717 applications for registration of trademarks were filed in 2003 in total, exceeding by 26 % the number of those filed in 2002.
Of these, 2,162 applications were filed under the Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks; 555 applications were filed under the national procedure, of which 241 applications were filed by domestic applicants. These numbers are more than those filed in 2002 by 73% and 19.3%, respectively.
During the reported period, 535 trademarks were registered and 2374 favorable decisions were granted to the international applications.
II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, and distribution of secondary sources of trademark information, i.e., trademark gazettes
All trademark documents are published in the Official Bulletin of Industrial Property, which is issued monthly. Documents are prepared in the personal workstations whereafter they are forwarded via Local Area Network to the Publication division where they are printed and copied using Rhysograph and Xerox copiers.
Various other Official Bulletins from other Intellectual Property Offices are also maintained in the Office library.
The library is also equipped with two workstations having access to the Office in-house trademark database and the Internet.
III. Matters concerning classifying, reclassifying and indexing of trademark information
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In 2003 the Office continued the development and implementation of the updated automation system on the basis of database management system-Oracle Database Server. The system core is located in a special server hall accommodating main components of the Local Area Network. It uses one central 1 Gbit switch and three 100 Megabit switches. Some Ethernet connections were also replaced. As a result, every user of the Local Area Network has 100 Mbit access capacity to the internal server.
The server complex includes up-to-date servers and central network switch. It is protected against fire and equipped with temperature sensors. These novel servers are operated with respective operating systems, namely, the Sun fire 480 servers operate with the operating system Sun Solaris 9.
The database management system installed on the servers is 64 bits Oracle 9i Database. As a whole, these three components, in particular, 64 bits server, 64 bits operating system, and 64 bits data management system allow enhanced performance as compared with that of the server complex used previously.
The workstations have access to the external databases via the Internet. Questel Orbit and Micropat commercial databases as well as Madrid Express are used for the purposes of search mainly.
The in-house database contains all data of trademarks which are searchable according to their legal status, bibliographic data etc.
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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Education and training activities were in progress in 2003 too. A number of seminars were held using visual aids, such as Power Point software. Every applicant or trademark attorney is given an opportunity of obtaining free qualified consultation on various legal matters.
The Office began to publish journal "Intellectual Property" containing papers on all spheres of intellectual property. It is published on paper and on the Website in PDF format (full texts). The authors of the papers are mainly the Office staff members. The new journal provides great aid to the public, among which are patent professionals, in obtaining useful educational materials.
IX. Other relevant matters