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The new Act No. 444/2002 on industrial designs came into force on October 1, 2002, replacing the previous Act No. 527/1990 on inventions, industrial designs and innovations.
In comparison with the statistics of the year 2001 and 2000, the results in 2002 in the industrial design area are as follows:
Merely 282 applications for industrial designs were filed with the Office in 2002 representing in total a 15.6 % increase in comparison with 2001. From foreign applicants, the most active are Germans (34), USA (19) and Czechs (13). Although the Slovak applicants filed 25 applications more than in 2001, the share of domestic applications is 63.8 % of the total.
By December 31, 2002, there were 1,608 valid industrial designs in the Slovak Republic.
The industrial design application procedure has been changed according to new Act No. 444/2002 on industrial designs.
Tab_designs - Table of statistical data
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Publication of industrial designs
The Office publishes registered industrial designs and industrial designs with the extension of the validity term of registration in the Official Gazette.
Industrial designs information forms part of the Official Gazette - “ Vestník ÚPV SR”, covering all industrial property rights in one publication. The paper form, issued monthly, is published in standard size A4, paperback and usually in cca 300 pages. In 2002, the Gazette had a circulation of 250 copies, of which 128 were distributed by subscription. Electronic form of Official Gazette, available to the public in the Internet free of charge, contains searchable data. The Official Gazette “Vestník ÚPV SR” has been distributed
within the frame of mutual exchange to 32 countries including to organizations such as EPO and WIPO last year.
The following numbers of industrial designs were published in the Official Gazette 2002:
Registered industrial designs 215
Extension of the term of validity of the industrial design registration 137
MS Office 97, QuarkXpress 4.1 for Windows and Corel Draw 10, Photoshop 6.0, FineReader 5.0, Adobe Acrobat 5.05 CE, SLEX99 – Lexicon of Slovak language are used for the data processing; the photocomposing and printing is carried out by the Office.
The Desk-Top Publishing technology is used for data and image inputs processing, for the Gazette and first pages of the design documents
Main types of announcements of the Office in the field of industrial design information
The Gazette contains industrial design announcements arranged in following main chapters:
- list of registered industrial designs (numerical series with classification symbols)
- registered industrial designs (arranged according to the classes of the Locarno Classification)
- registered designs with postponed publishing
- published registered designs after expiration of adjourment term of publishing
- official decisions (cancellation, etc.)
- assignments of rights and other changes of owners
- extension of the term of validity of the industrial design registration
- licence contract registered in the register
- the partial cancellation of the trademark registration
- the termination of sub-licence contracts
- the right of lien
III. Matters concerning classifying, reclassifying and indexing of industrial design information according to the classification systems applied
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The actual version of the International Classification for Industrial Design (Locarno Classification) is used for classifying industrial designs, which are classified by the Office´s experts.
Bibliographic data and processing for search purposes
The WIPO Standard ST.80 is used for patent and utility model 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 each 15 minutes on the Internet.
IV. Search file establishment and upkeep
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Industrial design search file of the Office comprises the industrial design collection of the Slovak Republic and also of the former Czechoslovak Republic.
In 2002, the IPO SR built the manual industrial design search system in the card catalogue form, arranged according to international industrial design classification, updated regularly.
Documentation from other offices maintained and/or considered part of the available search file
In 2002, within the frame of mutual exchange, the IPO SR received industrial design gazettes from the following states and organizations: AT, BA, BE, BG, BR, BX, CH, CZ, DE, EE, FR, GB, HR, HU, LT, LV, MD, MK, PL, PT, RO, RU, Sl, UA, US a WIPO.
V. Activities in the field of computerized search systems for industrial designs
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The online industrial design database serves for all industrial design procedures and searches. Select registry data are available to the public on the Internet.
It is possible to carry out searches according to bibliographic data in all the databases used for industrial designs.
External databases
The Czech registered industrial designs database in the Internet is used.
WIPO International Design Bulletin CD-ROM
Administrative management systems (e.g., register, legal status, statistics, administrative support, etc.)
Office automation management system contains industrial designs registry (data since 1993).
Administrative databases based on Lotus Domino.
Equipment used (hardware, including the types of terminal and network used, and software), data carriers used
Equipment used:
Fast ETHERNET 1000/10/10 Mbit/s, WINDOWS NT 4.0, 2000 for servers; workstations PC Pentium, Windows 95, NT 4.0 and 2000; HP Unix for database, Informix Dynamic Server 9.21
VI. Administration of industrial design services available to the public (relating to facilities, e.g., for lodging applications, registering designs, assisting clients with search procedures, obtaining official publications and registry extracts
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In 2002, the office’s reading room has been visited by 1,801 users and 1,161 of it were from the public. In total, 9,982 borrowings of patent and other literature were made available to the public and 29,954 copies of patent documents for the manual and computer search purposes, as well as copies from technical periodicals and other associated and non-patent literature were made available. In 2002, 407 patent searches, 2831 trademark searches and 38 design searches were performed, based on 1,183 written and 209 personally requests.
The office’s reading room including the search workstation opens daily from 7:30 to 15:00 except on Wednesday (8:00-16:00).
All online sevices and other basic information are available via the Internet address of IPO SR, www.upv.sk.
Information services available to the public (including computerized services and search files contained in libraries remote from your Office and industrial design information posted by your Office on the World Wide Web).
Information services available to the public:
- sales of the Official Gazette in paper form,
- on-line searches in Office’s search system, self-service during a personal visit,
- general information - provided by Office’s experts,
- searches upon request - orders in written and online form.
Industrial design information on the World Wide Web:
- general information
- information about Office activities (seminars, training courses, etc.)
- application guide and forms
- relevant laws
- Annual Reports
- selected registry data
- Official Gazette
- order forms (searches, non-patent literature)
- Locarno Classification (7-th edition)
VII. Matters concerning mutual exchange of industrial design documentation and information
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In 2002, the mutual exchange of patent documentation and official gazettes between the IPO SR and other offices and international organizations, including the WIPO, continued.
Exchange of machine-readable information, e.g., data contained on CD-ROM or magnetic tape
The IPO SR received registered industrial designs from JPO and granted design patents stored on CD-ROM, in the past year, from
USPTO.
VIII. Matters concerning education and training including technical assistance to developing countries
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IX. Other relevant matters