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In 2018, the Strategy of Activities at the Office until 2022, which includes activities in the area of patent information, was adopted. The Office intends in 2018 - 2022 to pursue the following main priorities to improve the quality of services provided and to optimize the Office's activities:
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The results of the cooperation of industrial property offices of the EU member states through the European Trade Mark and Design Network within the EUIPO Convergence Programme, aimed at harmonization of the practices and eliminating differences of national industrial property offices procedures, are agreements about a common practice. The Office applies the agreed rules within the joint announcements in its trade mark law practice.
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In 2019, the IPO SR continued to cooperate with the EUIPO in the area of convergence and harmonisation of trade mark practice. These were projects:
CP8 – General principles for assessing when the use of a trade mark in a form differing from the one registered alters its distinctive character
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Over the course of the year 2019 had the Office assisted in the maintenance and updating of the electronic tools that are a result of the projects in cooperation with the EUIPO. It is mainly concerning a harmonized database of the goods and services - TM Class, on which the Office is cooperating with the EUIPO within the convergent programs. The IPO SR regularly updates and votes on the submitted proposals regarding this database.
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Activities in trade mark information area were focused on the maintenance of the system of making data available from the Office registers on the Internet (Webregisters II), its regular updating and modifications related to changes in legislation. Selected data in the record details are connected to European and international systems (e.g. Madrid Monitor); from an external database (e.g. TMview) a link to national web registers is implemented.
Operation and availability of TMview and Designview services on a new platform were ensured. In terms of cooperation with foreign institutions, tools for ensuring data conversion according to the WIPO standards were implemented for the needs of the project Data Acquisition based on Quality at Source.
Maintenance Maintenance and updating the search system for trade marks – Acsepto® containing bibliographic data and images of national, international trade marks and European Union trade marks.
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During 2019, the Office received 2,878 trade mark applications; it is has increased by 5.2 % increase compared to the previous year.
Compared to 2018, the number of domestic applications increased by 3.6 % up to 2,314.
In 2019, 1.357 trade mark applications were filed internationally under the Madrid Agreement and the Protocol to Madrid Agreement; it represents a decrease by 13.6 % compared to the previous year.
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For comparison, we present statistical data on trade marks registered and registered in the years 2015 to 2019.
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Basic information for applicants related to IP subject matters applications are available on the website of the Office www.upv.sk. These are mainly application forms of particular type of industrial property right, legislation, instructions of the IPO SR and information for applicant, administrative fees, contact to expert assistance, etc. Below there are the individual areas of IP subject matters and relevant information sources with links to website of the Office, where they are available:
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Since February 1, 2014 the Central Public Administration Portal offers a form serving the general agenda, by means of which electronic filings can be made to every public institution in the Slovak Republic, thus also the IPO SR. From the 1st quarter of 2017, the Office also made specific electronic forms for trade mark.
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The Office offers for electronic filing a customer service. The helpdesk contact information is available on the website of the Office http://www.upv.sk/?uzivatelsky-servis-a-helpdesk.
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Since 2019, the Office has been keeping records of files and records of the specialised registry (files and records related to proceedings on industrial property rights subject matters applications) through the Fabasoft electronic information system for registry management, which is integrated with the Inventio system and web registers. From the point of view of the registry, the application files are kept in a combined form, i.e. items of the file are, depending on the form of delivery or dispatch, in electronic and paper form.
An overview of items of proceedings for each application is available in Webregisters in the record detail in the Protocol tab without possibility to read individual items contents.
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(i) Goods and services are classified in accordance with the actual version of the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (Nice Classification). In the IPO SR exist an obligatory classifying system of goods and services by applicant according to the said Classification. The last version of the International Classification of the Figurative Elements of Marks (Vienna Classification) is used as the code system of figurative elements of trade marks, which are classified by Office's expert.
The WIPO Standard ST.60 is used for trade mark 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 daily in the Internet.
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In accordance with the Act No.506/2009 the applicant is obliged to indicate in the application the goods and services for which the trade mark is filed, according to the International Classification (Nice Classification) accompanied with the appropriate number of this Classification. But there is no obligation for applicants to use pre-defined terms of the classification.
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Pursuant to the amended Decree No. 567/2009 Coll., implementing Act No. 506/2009 Coll. on Trade marks as amended by Decree No. 332/2018 Coll., within the scope of a trade mark application, the Office also accepts new types of expressions of the applied designations, i.e. positional, pattern, sound, motion, multimedia, holographic and other. Depending on the type, the JPG, MP3, MP4 electronic file format can be used for individual types of expressions of the applied designations.
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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 union trade mark, international trade mark).
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Three department employees performed pre-diagnostics service. In 2019, 32 pre-diagnostics were realised.
Naturally, the attention continued to be focused on innovative companies and institutions - for example, the Institute of Animal Physiology, Košice, an independent institute of the SAS; TANAX TRUCS a. s., Bratislava; Nexis Fibers a. s., Humenné; Banská Bystrica company EIBEN s. r. o., manufacturer of cryochambers Cryoniq s.r.o., Nové Zámky.
As in previous years, the IPO SR also promoted the protection of traditional craft and food products by protected geographical indications. In Rimavské Zalužany, the local craftsman Ladislav Hedvigi produces club toys decorated with traditional tracery decoration; the Company of Voľanský Family from Bardejov offers honeydew of high quality (awarded at world exhibitions); the liqueur made from hand-picked Orava blueberries - Hafirovica - is produced by the company of married couple Beňuš, Hafirovica s. r. o. from Oravská Polhora.
In cooperation with the Slovak Design Center, the Office also this year promoted the importance of protecting interesting design works. Again, the Office was approached by designers, among them Vlasta Kubušová from Crafting Plastics! Studio, focusing on the use of degradable bioplastics in everyday consumer products. In the case of this Studio, we recommended industrial property protection not only by design, but also by utility model.
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A free official edition of the IPO SR Gazette is available through the Office website as of January 2016 http://www.upv.sk/?vestnik-uradu-priemyselneho-vlastnictva-slovenskej-republiky. It is issued monthly. Older official editions of the Gazette published in the years 1993 – 2007 are published in printed form. In the years 2008 – 2015 the Gazette was published on CD-ROM in PDF format.
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ON-LINE DATABASES
http://www.upv.sk/?databases-and-registers
IPO SR makes accessible various databases on its web site. Freely accessible national databases are:
- "Data extracted from Registers" https://wbr.indprop.gov.sk/webregistre/ also called called "Webregisters" give public access to data extracted from trade mark register, which are kept by the Office with the possibility of simple and advanced search or browsing results. Data concerning in particular pending trade mark applications, all filed applications or registered trade marks in the register are daily updated.
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- Official Journal "Vestník ÚPV SR" may be viewed on the address http://www.upv.sk/?official-gazette - each issue is available as a one PDF file containing the whole issue. In the archive on this webpage are available the previous volumes also in PDF format.
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Information on the legal status is in the internal register of trade marks. The Office provides information on the request in the form of an extract from the Register. In addition, data of this type are also published in the IPO SR database on the internet https://wbr.indprop.gov.sk/webregistre/ but have only informative character and do not substitute the extract from the Register; similar to the system TMview where the data are mentioned by the EUIPO based on the information from the IPO SR within the common project.
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In the 1st quarter of 2017, the Office terminated the IPO Electronic Services project and deployed the solution in full operation. The result of the project is the Unified Information System of the IPO SR, which integrates the following systems operated by the Office: Inventio, Fabasoft, Webregisters and Electronic Forms Module.
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The Inventio system is used to manage the data related to the process of proceeding on individual industrial property subject matters, i.e. central management of registers of individual industrial rights subject matters in electronic form. It is a specific system developed by the Office with an external contractor exclusively for the needs of the Office. The system includes export and import mechanisms for exchanging and updating certain data, in particular with international institutions such as the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO). Exports and imports are based on international WIPO standards.
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Fabasoft is a certified system (certificate of Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic on compliance with the standards for electronic information systems for the administration of the registry defined in the Act No. 525/2011 Coll.) for electronic processing and keeping of files, records, documents and work procedures. The Document Management System (DMS) and some of the data required for Webregisters publishing have been moved to Fabasoft from Inventio. The Fabasoft system is also a central system integrated into some common modules of the Central Public Administration Portal (electronic mailbox module, authentication module, payment module, central electronic mailbox module, electronic delivery module and process integration and data integration module) to declared reference registers within the Slovak Republic (Register of Legal Entities, Entrepreneurs and Public Authorities; Natural Persons Register; Register of Addresses) and also with other systems of the Office such as the Electronic Forms Module and Webregisters.
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The online trade mark database kept by the Industrial Property Office serves for national trade marks searches and purposes of proceedings on trade mark applications. Selected register data are available to the public in the Internet http://www.upv.sk/?databases-and-registers.
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In the beginning of 2006, the Office implemented a new search system Acseptoâ. It enables performing the professional trade mark searches for designations of products and services in databases of national, international and European trade marks as well as in other selected trade mark databases.
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Trade mark gazettes form also part of the available search files of the Office. In 2019, within the frame of mutual exchange, the IPO SR continued in receiving trade mark gazettes from the following states: Bulgaria and Kyrgyzstan.
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Administrative management system is based on Lotus Domino and Fabasoft eGov Suite. In January 2017, Fabasoft eGov Suite also extended for the administration of a specialised registry related to industrial property rights subject matters.
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In 2019, the Office’s reading room has been visited by 63 users. In total there were provided 52 borrowings borrowings of patent and other literature made available to the public and 883 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 2019 there were performed 271 trade mark searches, 22 searches on bibliographic data and 554 EUTM searches were performed for the EUIPO.
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The Office’s reading room serves as a WIPO deposit library as well. The deposit library fund includes 322 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 14:30.
In In 2019, 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.
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Since 2003 the Office has cooperated with Contact and Information Points, while some of them are also the Patent Information Centres (PATLIB). 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 and within the University of Žilina as the Centre for Technology Transfer. Nowadays 11 Contact and Information Points are located in Slovakia and 5 of them are Patent Information Centres. A list of centres and points is available on the Office’s web site http://www.upv.sk/?partners.
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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 serves as a contact and information point.
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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 office¢s offices databases via Internet etc.
Representatives of Centres and Contact Points participated in 2019 in the Conference organised by the Office on the occasion of the World Intellectual Property Day on April 27, and PATLIB Centres representatives at the Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information in Bratislava, the State Scientific Library in Banská Bystrica and the State Scientific Library in Košice representatives also participated in the Summit PATLIB. The Summit, which was organised by the European Patent Office in cooperation with the host Portuguese Institute of Industrial Property, was held in May 6 – 7, 2019, in Porto. It was a strategic meeting to reflect on the concept of developing PATLIB Centres and to prepare the ground for reorienting PATLIB Centres to highly qualified and various kinds of modern services providers. The PATLIB Centres employees had the possibility to participate in the educational programme Intellectual Property for free. In 2019, two employees from the State Scientific Library in Banská Bystrica completed the course.
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The role of fourteen INNOINFOs located in the Slovak regions is to raise awareness on IP protection among SMEs. INNOINFO are placed in business incubators (Incubator Malacky and BIC Bratislava, spol. s r. o.), regional information and advisory centres – RPIC Komárno, Poprad, Prešov, Regional Development Agency Kysuce in Čadca and 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 University Science Park, University in Žilina. Currently five regional Chambers of Commerce and Industry – Bratislava, Trenčín, Banská Bystrica, Košice and Prešov are partners of the Office as the ”innoinfo”.
In the Košice Regional Chamber premises, the Open Day of the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic was organised. During that day, the Office´s employees provided provided interested entrepreneurs with information concerning a general overview of intellectual property, as well as search options and the basics of document searching.
Director of Patent Department and Director of Trade Marks and Designs Department provided provided the Bratislava Regional Chamber with the latest information in the field of industrial property protection of patents, designs and trade marks, and the Director of Receiving and Changes Department presented the applications electronic filing and subsequent filings.
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- International application under the PCT (electronic form of publication);
- Annual report of the Industrial Property Office of SR 2018;
- Magazine Duševné vlastníctvo (Intellectual Property Magazine) - the only Slovak periodical focused on the issues of industrial rights and copyright. In 2019, the Office issued four issues of the magazine in electronic and printed forms.
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The website of the Office www.upv.sk is a complex source of information for public. In addition, it has been becoming the effective means of communication. It allows the public to access quickly to information and databases related to IP. Both Slovak and English versions provide information about upcoming conferences, seminars and other events.
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In 2019, the number of visits of the IPO SR web portal was approximately 181,000. The most Most users were from Slovakia (approximately 67 %), followed by users from France (11 %), the Czech Republic (approximately 5 %), the USA (4 %), and surprisingly from South Korea (up to 2 %). 18 % of users are regularly returning portal users. Databases and web registers (9.4 %) are the most visited subpages of the portal. They are followed by trade marks (9 %), patents (3.2 %) and utility models (1.5 %). More than 60 % of visitors visit the pages directly through the link to a particular subpage – not via the main page of the portal first.
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The Office regularly publishes selected data from Registers in its Webregisters. Databases contain selected data from IP subject matters Registers kept by the Office and are updated daily. Details of the records provide bibliographic data, data on the state of applications and legal status, full texts of published patent documents in PDF format, trade mark expressions and designs representations and sequence items.
The Office also uses the portal www.patentovat.sk, linked to the social network Facebook to raise public awareness of the IP importance and protection. The Facebook page named The Industrial Property Office of SR – patentovat.sk is updated daily. The number of visitors, fans of the Facebook page increased by 50, at the end of 2019 this number reached nearly 530.
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PORTAL http://www.dusevnevlastnictvo.gov.sk/
The IPO SR cooperates with the Ministry of Culture of SR in keeping the portal http://www.dusevnevlastnictvo.gov.sk. This information portal is a digital platform to give a basic overview, orientation and information resources across all IP subject matters. It contains information on copyright and rights related to copyright, IP rights, the law against unfair competition, it also includes information on the legal regulation of trade names, trade secrets and know-how.
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4 lectures were held for elementary schools, 13 for secondary schools and 6 for universities. The lectures for elementary and secondary schools included the Office excursion and Scientific Toy. 12 lectures were held for entrepreneurs. For educational activities aimed at small and middle-sized entrepreneurs, the cooperation with their professional associations in particular regions was proved successful.
At the turn of April and May, the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic carried out an internship programme resulting from the Cooperation Agreement with Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. The two-week programme was attended by students of the Faculty of Law of UMB (4) and students of the Faculty of Political Sciences and International Relations of UMB (4).
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The IPO SR tries to get closer to public via several popularisation activities. The most important events are those organised on the occasion of the World IP Day, Researchers´ Night, various exhibitions in the IPO SR premises or educational programme Intellectual Property.
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Every year, on April 26, we celebrate celebrate the World Intellectual Property Day to remind ourselves of the importance of intellectual property rights (patents, trade marks, designs and copyrights) in promoting innovations and creativity. This year's World Intellectual Property Day campaign – Reach for Gold – looked closer into the world of sport. The campaign explored how innovation, creativity and intellectual property rights protect the development of sport and promote the enjoyment of sport around the world. On this occasion, the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic in Banská Bystrica organised the 19th Annual Conference Intellectual Property in Slovakia. The conference featured topics on copyright in sport, intellectual property rights infringement in organising events, winners of the National Design Award 2018 and innovative patent video technology were presented.
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On September 12, 2019, the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic in cooperation with the European Union Office for Intellectual Property organised the Conference Intellectual Property and its Impact on the State Economy the aim of which was to highlight the alarming impact of intellectual property rights infringements on a global as well as on a regional levels. The Executive Director of the European Union Office for Intellectual Property Christian Archambeau and the Minister of Culture of the Slovak Republic Ľubica Laššáková accepted the invitation to the Conference.
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On September 27, 2019, the Office joined the thirteenth year of the Science Festival in Slovakia - European Researchers' Night 2019. The IPO SR employees participated in the project in Banská Bystrica and Žilina, where they provided information on the intellectual property protection to both laic and professional public. Quizzes about inventions and inventors were prepared for children.
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For the first time the Office in cooperation with the Banská Bystrica Information Centre prepared for the public the Town Wandering, regularly organised by the Banská Bystrica Information Centre and this year it focused on the Industrial Property Office of SR and its activities. The actions had more than 60 participants.
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In April, the exhibition Made in Paper, which is a joint project of the Technical University in Zvolen and the Tomas Bata University in Zlín, was opened in the entrance area of the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic. Students from the Department of Furniture and Interior Design of the Technical University in Zvolen and the Tomas Bata University in Zlín, inspired by paper, explored the unique properties of this material as a supporting construction material that could be applied, for example, in furniture production.
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Since January 2019, the Programme Intellectual property continued at the Office by the Module B – CREATIVITY – ITS MANAGEMENT, MARKETING AND ECONOMICS, which terminated in February 2019. From March 2019 to May 2019 the Module C – INFORMATION IN THE FIELS OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY – was running. 22 participants of the Programme successfully completed module B in February and in May 2019 22 participants completed the Module C. In the school year 2019/2020 since September 26, the Institute Intellectual Property continues by the Module D – INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY LAW. It has been running all school year and consists of the following units: Industrial Rights and Related and Associated Rights, Patent and Trade Mark Rights. 20 participants attend the Module D. In October 2019 6 participants successfully defended their final works.
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At the turn of April and May, the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic carried out an internship programme resulting from the Cooperation Agreement with Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica. The two-week programme was attended by students of the Faculty of Law of UMB (4) and students of the Faculty of Political Sciences and International Relations of UMB (4).
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The Industrial Property Office of SR in cooperation with the Slovak Chamber of Patent Attorneys organised in November 2019 the professional examination to perform patent attorney activities. The examination was successfully passed by one applicant.
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In 2019, the tools implemented through the European Cooperation Projects (ECP) of the EUIPO continued to be actively used and were available not only to national experts but also to the public. These include tools in application CESTO (Common Support Tool for Examiners), Quality (Centralising Information on IP Office Quality Standards), Seniority and Similarity (IP Office Assessments of Similarity between Goods and Services), also TMview and (Trade Mark Search Tool) and TMClass (Trade Mark Classification Tool) portals.
Since 2014, the Office's Information Centre experts have been using the results of the Common Central Database project, which was implemented in the EUIPO to build up the so-called Knowledge Database. It means that questions about EUTM or RCD or related questions are transferred by the Office´s experts to EUIPO experts to harmonise answers about EUTM or RCD.
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According to the Council Regulation No. 2424/2015 on the Community trade mark the Office carries out the searches on EU trade marks. The number of requests under the system applicable to applications for the EU trade marks has been stabilized at an average of 14 trade marks per week and 554 searches were processed in year 2019.
Similarly as in case of the services provided to the public the search system Acsepto® has been used also for EUTM searches. It enables making searches of word, picture and combined trade marks within all designations applied for or protected in the territory of the Slovak Republic.
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In 2019 the Office made Slovak trade marks available periodically in the search system TMview http://tmview.europa.eu/tmview/welcome.html. It is a database of trade marks of the EU member states aimed at searching and informative searches on interchangeability with references and links to national databases in languages of all participated countries and with the system TMclass for the assistance in classification of goods and services.
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