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In the area of designs the existence of Community design system had significant impact on the number of foreign applications. Compared to the preceding year the number decreased by 67 % to 33.
137 applications for industrial designs filed with the Office in 2005 is in total 37,2 % decrease in comparison with 2004. From the foreign applicants the most active are Czechs (33) and Germans (9).
Although the Slovak applicants filed by 14 applications less than in 2004 (decrease by 11,9 %). Share of domestic application makes 76 %.
On December 31, 2005 there were 1.656 domestic industrial design registrations valid and over 70.000 designs registered by the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market.
For the comparison we provide statistics of the years 1999 - 2005 in industrial design area:
II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, and distribution of industrial design documents and of secondary sources of industrial design information, i.e., official gazettes
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Publication of industrial designs
The Office publishes registered industrial designs in the Official Gazette.
Industrial design information forms part of the Official Gazette - “ Vestník ÚPV SR”, covering all industrial property rights in one publication. Paper form issued monthly is published in standard size A4, paperback and usually in cca 300 pages. In 2005 the Gazette had a circulation of 250 copies, of which 111 were distributed monthly by subscription. Other copies were sent free of charge to patent information centres and contact and information points of the IPO, to information and consulting sites INNOINFO, within the frame of industrial property information exchange to foreign offices and as the statutory copies according to the act as well. 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 30 countries including organizations EPO and WIPO last year.
The following numbers of industrial designs were published in the Official Gazette 2005:
167 registered industrial designs
164 registered industrial designs with the extended term of validity
MS Office 97, QuarkXpress 5.0 for Windows and Corel Draw 10, Photoshop 6.0, FineReader 7.0, 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 Official Gazette contains industrial design announcements arranged in following main chapters:
- list of registered industrial designs (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of registered industrial designs (arranged according to the classes of the Locarno Classification)
- list of registered industrial designs with the extended term of validity (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of registered industrial designs with the extended term of validity (arranged according to the classes of the Locarno Classification)
- list of registered industrial designs with postponed publishing (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of registered industrial designs with postponed publishing (arranged according to the classes of the Locarno Classification)
- list of published registered industrial designs after expiration of adjournment term of publishing (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of published registered industrial designs after expiration of adjournment term of publishing (arranged according to the classes of the Locarno Classification)
- official decisions (lapse (expiration), etc.)
- assignments of rights and other changes of owners
- cancellation of the industrial designs registration
- partial cancellation of the industrial designs registration
- registration of licensing contracts in respect of industrial designs
- termination of licensing contracts
- right of lien
- corrections of names, addresses, dates and mistakes
III. Matters concerning classifying, reclassifying and indexing of industrial design information according to the classification systems applied
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The current version of the International Classification for Industrial Design (Locarno Classification) is used for classifying of industrial designs, which are classified by Office´s experts.
Bibliographic data and processing for search purposes
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Industrial design search file of the Office comprises the industrial design collection of the Slovak Republic and also former Czechoslovak Republic.
The IPO SR built in 2005 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 2005, 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, IT, LT, LV, MD, MK, PL, PT, RO, RU, SI, 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 in the Internet.
It is possible to carry out searches according to bibliographic data in all the databases used for industrial designs.
External databases
Czech registered industrial designs database in the Internet
WIPO International Design Bulletin CD-ROM
OHIM - Industrial Designs Database
Administrative management systems (e.g., register, legal status, statistics, administrative support, etc.)
The Office automation management system contains industrial designs registry (data since 1991) using “INVENTIO” software.
Administrative databases based on Lotus Domino.
Equipment used (hardware, including the types of terminal and network used, and software), data carriers used
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In 2005, the Office’s reading room has been visited by 1.734 users and 1.245 of it were from the public. In total there were provided 6.896 borrowings of patent and other literature made available to the public and 21.730 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. In 2005 there were performed 211 patent searches, 2.693 trademark searches and 35 design searches based on 981 written and 142 personally requests.
The Office’s reading room including the search workstation opens daily from 8:00 to 15:00 except the Wednesday (9:00-16:00).
All online services and other basic information are available via 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).
The Office library provides following services to the public:
- general information provided by Office’s experts
- lending service (Official Gazettes, special monographs and reference literature) in the reading room
- interlibrary lending service
- international interlibrary lending service
- sale of special monographs and periodical publications (“Intellectual Property”, Official Gazette Vestník ÚPV SR” in paper) upon request or on the place
- reprographic services upon request or on the place
- on-line searches in Office’s search system, self-service during a personal visit
- searches upon request - orders in written and online form
- registry information provided in the reading room
- CD-ROM workstations available in the reading room
Industrial design information on the World Wide Web:
- general information
- information about Office activities (seminars, training courses, etc.)
- application guide and forms
- administrative fees
- relevant laws
- Annual Reports
- selected registry data
- Official Gazette
- order forms (searches, Official Gazette, special literature)
- Locarno Classification (8-th edition)
Patent Information Centres and Contact and Information Points
The four IPO SR patent information centres and six contact and information points of the IPO SR established in 2003 are located in state, regional and district libraries as well as in the Slovak National Library in Martin and Centre of Scientific and Technical Information in Bratislava. A list of centres and points is available on the Office’s web site http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=10&idd2=
The main goal of patent information centres is to provide complex information services in the field of patent, trademark 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 as a contact and information point.
The main goal of contact and information points of the Office is to inform the public about where can apply for protection of the results of creative activity, and particularly to inform the general public about the existence of the national institution, which protects immaterial goods, industrial property.
The Office supported the activity of centres and contact and information points by regular sending Slovak patent specifications in paper also on optical discs (fulltext ESPACE-PRECES CD-ROM, bibliographic data thereof on ESPACE ACCESS PRECES ) as well as announcements concerning industrial property rights in the Official Gazette form, all information materials and recources 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 databases via Internet etc.
The Office had organised the three specialized seminars during last year held in the Slovak National Library in Martin and in the Juraj Fándly Library in Trnava, in May and in the State Scientific Library in Košice, in June.
Within the multilateral co-operation programme with EPO the representative of the Centre of Scientific and Technical Information participated on the PATLIB 2005 Conference in Sinaia in Romania. Together with the Office representative the Slovak delegates were thus given the possibility of gaining new knowledge and experience concerning the co-operation of patent offices with regional patent information centres and to get familiar with activities of similar patent information centres established in other European countries.
Information and consulting sites for innovations
Last year the Office managed to provide for the compliance with the requirement of assisting the small and medium sized enterprises, or the technical universities with their innovation related activities, on a systematic basis and spread the information on industrial property protection within the target group. Namely the small and medium sized enterprises are the main bearers of development in Slovakia and at the same time pose a great challenge, when it comes for legal protection of new technical solutions. The Office in favour of small and medium enterprises in 2005 established the first four information and consulting sites for innovations – „INNOINFO“ and another six were established during the last year – The Slovak Chamber of Commerce and Industry – Regional Office in Bratislava, The Malacky “Incubator”, The Regional Advisory and Information Centre (RPIC) in Komárno, RPIC Poprad, RPIC Prešov and BIC Spišská Nová Ves, s. r. o., Business & Innovation Centre.
Workplace of the IPO SR in Bratislava
Workplace of the Office, which was opened in 2004 in the building of the Ministry of Finance in Bratislava offered especially services concerning the searches in the fields of trademarks, designs and patents in the last year. In the workplace, there is a filing room and room for discussions and negotiations .
VII. Matters concerning mutual exchange of industrial design documentation and information
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Training courses for national participants
THE COURSE “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY”
In September a new year of the Intellectual Property course began. The Office’s Institute for Education was established in year 2000, when the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic granted the accreditation to the IPO SR for a period of five years. In January 2005 the Office has obtained a new five-year period accreditation. The lecturers are university teachers, experts from practice and the IPO SR experts. An overall number of training lessons extends to 342 hours, out of which 227 hours are lectures and the remaining training hours are devoted to hands-on practical exercising and training.
The Intellectual Property course consists of four separate parts: module A – Intellectual Property and Copyright Law Essentials; module B – Creativity - Management of Creativity, Marketing and Economics; module C – Information in the field of Industrial Property Protection; module D – Industrial Property Law. In 2005 continued in course 25 participants, out of which 18 employees of IPO SR.
Last year the Office also released a CD-ROM with final theses of the Intellectual Property course attendants during the period from year 2000 to year 2005.
Supporting activities:
CONFERENCE
Almost 70 participants took part in the fifth year of the Conference “Intellectual Property in Slovakia V” held on the occasion of the World Intellectual Property Day, the main topic of which were innovations. On this occasion, an open door day of the IPO was held on April 27, during which the Office opened its non-public premises to people. Excursion was connected with presentation of the Office and provision of information and consultancy services.
LECTURES AND SEMINARS
In June 2005 the IPO SR in co-operation with Office for Technical Assistance and Information Exchange of the European Commission (TAIEX) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation organised an international seminar on the Enforcement of intellectual property rights in a modern society. The seminar was predominantly for judges, customs and police officers. For research workers in the area of biotechnology the Office prepared a seminar on legal protection of biotechnological inventions dedicated for scientists in the European Union.
At the end of the year the Office organised a seminar on Support of Intellectual Property. Guests from Poland made presentation on patent information centres, contact and information sites and information and advisory centres of the Office for innovations – „INNOIFO", on project IPR Helpdesk. This project has been addressed within the 5th and 6th framing programme of the European Union, the objective of which is enhance the public awareness on intellectual property related rights and inform the small and medium sized enterprises on possibilities offered by protection with regards to new technical solutions as well as in connection with their subsequent use.
In pursuance of specific requirements the Office provided for a variety of specialisation oriented groups the lectures, presentations and educational courses related to industrial property rights protection.
JOURNAL
Awareness of the public in the field of intellectual property is increased also by the professional magazine INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY magazine (“Duševné vlastníctvo”) issued quarterly by the Office. Magazine went through a significant change last year. Both, the graphic layout and quality of articles have improved. The magazine offers a wide range of thematically oriented topic. On the occasion of World Intellectual Property Day the IPO SR offered to readers “The Intellectual Property Extra” a sixteen-page full-colour monothematic bulletin. edition No. 3/2005 included a twelve-page integral part was devoted to UmInEx Exhibition 2005 and to “Ján Bahýľ Prize”.
12 editions of the E-zine IPO SR e-mail magazine were released last year. The magazine in electronic form released regularly each month consists of permanent sections with information from the IPO SR, the world, monitoring of periodicals, selected information from the separate editions of the Intellectual Property Magazine and not missing was also the knowledge contest in the area of science and technology, receiving much acclaimed by E-zine readers.
EXHIBITIONS
The IPO SR is continuously enhancing the public awareness on industrial property protection also by means of presentations of fairs and exhibitions. Besides organising the national exhibition UmInEx in Banská Bystrica, on 25th International Building Fair CONECO in Bratislava, at the 35th International Chemistry Fair INCHEBA in Bratislava, at the 11th International Mechanical Engineering Fair in Nitra, and the 15th Annual Conference on Patent Information EPIC 2005 in Budapest as well as at the Exhibition of Innovations IENA 2005 in Nuremberg within a joint stand of the European Patent Offices: „Internationales Patent-Informationszentrum“.
The Conference in Budapest was oriented on the exchange of new knowledge and experience acquired by specialists from patent offices, commercial providers of patent information services and patent information users.
UmInEx 2005 Exhibition
From September 20 to 22, 2005 the Office organised already the fourth year of UmInEx, the national exhibition of inventions and technical news. Within the three days nearly 40 exhibitors had presented their exhibits in the form of drawings, prototypes, technologies models and final products. Quite a few visitors managed to contact the prospective manufacturers and sellers of their new products, which is one of the exhibition main objectives.
PUBLICATIONS
Last year the Office released six publications. Besides the Intellectual Property in Slovakia Conference workshop V included the second amended and updated edition of the publication Intellectual Property – the development tool for small and medium sized enterprises, the second volume of Collection of Selected Decisions by IPO SR (Volume I has been released in year 2003), International Application Form according to PCT (instructions for applicants), UmInEx Exhibitors Catalogue and the five-volume edition of the International Patent Classification.
The information materials focused on a general mission of the Office and the industrial became the subject to specific target groups. The two types of brochures released in the attractive cartoon-like form: Patents and Trademarks were made available to students. The two information brochures entitled: “Making a Mark” and “Looking Good” were intended to small and medium sized enterprises, introduced the issue of trademarks and designs.
OTHER
The year 2005 Ján Bahýľ Prize
The name of the Slovak designer and inventor of helicopter has been given to the prize being granted for extraordinary valuable technical solution in Slovakia. Based on recommendations by an evaluating committee comprised of eleven members the IPO SR the President of the IPO SR grants the Ján Bahýľ Prize in two-year intervals, including a financial premium of 100,000 SKK. It is also in this way the Office wishes to encourage the development of technical creativity and protection of industrial property related activities in Slovakia.
The Ján Bahýľ Prize was acquired by - Duslo, a. s., Šaľa, as the owner of patent SK 283 209 – 4-aminodifenylamine preparation method and the five originators of invention.
Relations with mass media
In the framework of newly launched cooperation with media, IPO SR provided series of radio broadcasted advisory sessions in Slovak Radio, TV reports and spots in TV Markiza and Slovak Television STV as well as popularization of IP field and IPO SR activities in print media.
IX. Other relevant matters