Annual Technical Report on Patent Information Activities in 2016 submitted by Brazil/INPI
I. GENERAL OVERVIEW OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN PATENT INFORMATION ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT BY THE OFFICE
Outline of main policies and plans aimed at development of patent information activities and expected time frames for their realization
INPI has initiated a strong effort to make patent information available in digital format. The Office expects to make available all the documentation related to around 700.000 patent applications over the next three years.
New projects launched or resumed this year in the context of the policies and plans mentioned above, short description: aims, partners, tasks
Main areas of patent information activities and related information and communication technology (ICT) practices which were in the focus of attention last year
Statistics: changes in terms of application filings and grants with respect to previous year; trends or areas experiencing rapid changes
The Brazilian IP Office has seen a drop in the number of patent applications, from 30,217 in 2015 to 28,009 in 2016 (-7.3%). It contrasts with the trend for utility model applications in the same period, which has increased 8.0%: from 2,719 utility model applications in 2015 to 2,937 applications in 2016.
In 2016, with 28,009 patent applications filed, the number of resident applications has increased and achieved 5,199 (+12%), while non-resident applications has dropped (-10.8%) to 22,810. Regard utility model applications filed, the number of resident applications has increased and achieved 2,815 (+8.0%), while non-resident applications has increased (+8.9%) to 122. When considering patents, in 2016 the non-residents filed 81% of the applications and the residents filed 19%. Considering utility models, non-residents filed 4% of the applications and the residents filed 96%.
Regarding the grants, in 2016, Brazil granted 4,195 patents and 564 utility models. Out of those patents, 87.4% were granted to non-residents and 12.6% to residents, while considering the granted utility models, the non-residents received 2% of the grants, and the residents 98%. Among the main foreign countries that were awarded with patent grants in 2016 are the United States of America with 35% of the non-residents total, Germany with 13% and France and Japan with 9% each one.
Other matters and useful links (URLs): annual report of the Office, news page, statistics, etc.
Others statistics related to Brazilian patents applications are available at http://www.inpi.gov.br/sobre/estatisticas.
II. SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES RELATED TO PATENT INFORMATION CARRIED OUT BY THE OFFICE
Information and support provided by the Office to applicants regarding filing on paper and/or e-filing (instructions, seminars, etc.) - URLs
General guidance manuals for patent filling on paper are available at (Portuguese only)
http://www.inpi.gov.br/portal/artigo/guia_basico_patentes
INPI has discontinued the former electronic filing platform known as e-Deposito, which required a specific software to be downloaded by the user. A new web-based electronic filing tool was launched and can be accessed at
https://gru.inpi.gov.br/peticionamentoeletronico/
The electronic filing manual can be access at (Portuguese only):
http://www.inpi.gov.br/menu-servicos/arquivos-dirpa/Manual_do_Usuario_DIRPA_27_04_2017_versao_15.pdf
Availability of the application dossier in electronic form
The dossiers of the application are now indexed and can be accessed on the internet through a patent search system (https://gru.inpi.gov.br/pePI/jsp/patentes/PatenteSearchBasico.jsp), when available in electronic format.
Classification1, preclassification2 (if applicable), reclassification3 activities; classification systems used (e.g., International Patent Classification (IPC)); matters concerning indexing of patent information
Two classification systems are used at the Office, IPC and CPC. While IPC is available in Portuguese (http://ipc.inpi.gov.br) applied by all areas, CPC was not translated and neither all areas apply to classify their documents yet. We use INID (51) for IPC, as expected, and (52) for CPC since December 2014.
INPI pre-classifies an application by allotting an administrative unit, i.e. a technical area, using automated means (neural network algorithm). All administrative units are automatically ranked for every application and the application is then routed to the first technical area ranked. If this first choice is incorrect, the application can be rerouted to another unit, usually the second one ranked.
We suggest our examiners to reclassify a document during the exam. We don’t update our database when a family member of the document is reclassified by another Office due a new IPC version, yielding to many documents reclassified during the exam. When a patent application is reclassified, it receives an automatic publication in the Gazette.
Regarding IPC projects, the INPI has been Rapporteur of 35 projects, being 9 C-projects (creation of new groups), 4 M-projects (maintenance) and 22 D-projects (definitions). We participated in the task force of the WL Distribution Algorithm. We continue our engagement in the IPC-forum and IPC meetings.
We use WIPO systems related to classification, i.e. IPCPUB for the IPC publication, IPCRMS for translating the IPC and IPCRECLASS for reclassification due new IPC versions.
Abstracting, reviewing, and translation of the information contained in patent documents
Other activities
III. SOURCES OF PATENT INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE OFFICE
Main types of publications of the Office (patent applications, full text, first pages, abstracts, bibliographic data, granted patents, etc.), medium (on paper, on CDs, online - URLs)
Since April 2005, official notices and selected bibliographic data relating to BR patent applications and granted patents are published in the official weekly electronic Brazilian Official Gazette (Revista da Propriedade Industrial - RPI). Official gazettes are available on the Brazilian Patent Office website in PDF and TXT format, at http://revistas.inpi.gov.br/rpi/, and all published officials gazettes are stored in the library available to the public. Bibliographic data of Brazilian patents are available for consultation at an internal database (SINPI) and at internet (www.inpi.gov.br). Keyword searches in titles or abstracts are available only in Portuguese. Brazilian patent documents' first pages contain bibliographic data, according to WIPO standards.
Official Gazettes: main types of announcements, frequency of publication, medium (on paper, on CDs, online - URL), etc.
Since April 2005, official notices and selected bibliographic data relating to BR patent applications and granted patents are published in the official weekly electronic Brazilian Official Gazette (Revista da Propriedade Industrial - RPI). Official gazettes are available on the Brazilian Patent Office website in PDF and TXT format, at http://revistas.inpi.gov.br/rpi/, and all published officials gazettes are stored in the library available to the public.
Information products and patent document collections (coverage, medium, etc.) available to examiners, including external collections and databases
INPI has a collection of DVD and CD-ROM containing published or granted US, Benelux, WO, EP, DE, ES, FR, JP, KR,OA CH, GB and TR patent documents, and paper copies of entire documents can be provided for internal or external demands.
INPI has also a paper collection of BR, US, WO, EP, AU, CA, NL, DE, CH, GB and FR patent documents classified according to the IPC and a microform patent document collection from BR, ES, US, FR, GB, DE and CH. This collection has been frozen since the implementation of search systems.
Internal users access CD-ROM, DVD, Epoque, Dialog, Thomson Reuters’ GENESEQ, CAS-STN, Vantage Point, Freely accessible databases on Internet and SINPI (Integrated System of Industrial Property - internal database).
Information products and patent document collections (coverage, medium, etc.) available to external users, conditions of access (e.g., free of charge, subscription, etc.)
INPI currently gives public access to its patent, trademarks, industrial designs and computer software databases free search tool through our website.
Legal status information (kind of information, coverage, medium, etc.)
The Directorate of Patents has recently mapped the patent application workflow based on their legal statuses. An automatic state machine that controls this work flow based on events published on the Patent Gazette is currently being implemented. The intention is that by the end of 2018 the complete legal status information for all the Brazilian patent documents will be directly available to the general public at the office webpage.
A report describing the legal status and state machine development can be accessed at (Portuguese only):
Other sources
IV. ICT SUPPORT TO SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES RELATED TO PATENT INFORMATION CARRIED OUT BY THE OFFICE
Specific software tools supporting business procedures within the Office: general description, characteristics, advantages, possible improvements
(i) Information Security Infrastructure: Essentially, this environment guarantees that information is protected from intentional or accidental modifications, by using the Fortnet firewall (Fortigate 1000C) for filtering, VPN controlling and Spam controlling. This hardware also acts as an IDS agent to inspect the inbound and outbound network activity identifying suspicious patterns, including Internet traffic. The INPI uses another kind of firewall to isolate networks like PROSUR, where the support is obtained from the pfSense-br.org. To complement this structure, the FortiAnalyzer guarantees the integration of network logging, analysis and reporting into a system with the view to create knowledge of security events throughout the network.
(ii) Networking Infrastructure: The focus of this structure is to maintain connectivity between LAN and the server farm, employing the central switch Matrix N-7 from Enterasys. As this switch is located in the INPI 's Datacenter, it has the function of concentrating all the incoming connections from the offices of INPI. This infrastructure is complemented by the SAN switches from Brocade to support connections in fiber channel to the Virtualization Infrastructure, Storage Infrastructure and Backup Infrastructure. A Wireless Internet network with 100 access points ensures that all floors of the two main buildings have Internet access. The Internet link consists on a High Load Balance through F5 Big IP System 2000S, two internet connection links with 300Mbps speed. The Central Data Center in Rio de Janeiro is interconnected with 12 branch regional offices with a MPLS connection with 64Mbps.
(iii) Virtualization Infrastructure: The DataCenter has HP Blade Servers with 16 Blades under two Intel Xeon Quad-core 2.83 Ghz processors and 32GB RAM and 4 Blades under two Intel Xeon Quad-core 2.83 Ghz processors and 512GB RAM . All hosts are built in virtual machines running operating systems over the virtualization platform from vMware mounted with vSphere 5.1 and vCenter 5.1. With more than 210 virtual machines, the operating systems are distributed through Windows Server 2012 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Virtual Datacenters.
(iv) Storage Infrastructure: To provide rapid response in all IT environments, INPI invested in the Hitachi High End VSP solution, that is responsible to maintain the information stored in 137 Terabytes with Raid 6 array ensuring availability required to the business process. The backup architecture is base on a tape robot storage.
(v) Desktop Infrastructure: The computers used to support the business process are based in the solution from Itautec Infoway ST4273 with two monitor with 21 inches per research.
Hardware used to supporting business processes of the Office
Internal databases: coverage, updates, interlinks with external sources
Establishment and maintenance of electronic search file: file building, updating, storage, documents from other offices included in the search file
Administrative management electronic systems (register, legal status, statistics, and administrative support)
Other matters
V. PROMOTION ACTIVITIES AIMED TO SUPPORT USERS IN ACCESS AND EFFICIENT USE OF PATENT INFORMATION
Patent library: equipment, collection management, network of patent libraries in the country, cooperation with foreign patent libraries
INPI's Library offers a range of products and services in terms of industrial property information. Library's catalog is avaiable at INPI website. The Library's Reading Room offers OPAC terminals where general public may access to bibliographic and industrial property databases. The Library is a member of the WIPO Depositary Libraries Program, opening its collection to users from Brazil. As a member of "Portal Periódicos Portal" Consortium, INPI's Library provide acess to more than 30,000 periodical títles and 160 bibliographic, statistical, sound and visual databases in all technological fields. Also, the Library is a member of COMUT, a national comutation program from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. As a partner of COMUT, INPI's Library may access to collections from more than 2,500 partners in Brazil and overseas.
Publications related to different business procedures and patent information sources available to users, for example, books, brochures, Internet publications, etc.
Library's collection has a range of publications specialized in industrial property and related fields as books, thesis, periodical, reports, etc.
Office's initiatives on providing foreign patent information in the local language(s) (e.g., machine translation tools, translation of abstracts)
Cooperation with universities, research centers, technology and innovation support centers, etc.
We develop sectoral studies using patent information in partnership with universities, research centers and government institutions.
Education and training: training courses, e-learning modules (URLs), seminars, exhibitions, etc.
We offer the following courses: "Patents as source of Technological Information: patent searches in practice"; "Workshop on Patent Searches and Patent Drafting"; "Industrial Property - Intermediate level"; “Intellectual Property for Librarians”; “Portal Periódicos CAPES Consortia / technical literature databases” for patent examiners in different fields; and “Portal Periódicos CAPES Consortia / technical literature databases for Innovation Units”; Distance learning: "General Course on Intellectual Property (DL 101P BR)" in partnership with WIPO
INPI provides free of charge Patent Search tutorials in our website. Also we offer patent search and Landscape courses with different levels of difficulties.
Other activities
VI. INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ACTIVITIES IN THE FIELD OF PATENT INFORMATION
International exchange and sharing of patent information in machine-readable form, e.g., priority documents, bibliographic data, abstracts, search reports, full text information
INPI sends to 5 countries/organizations (LATIPAT, WIPO, JPO, EPO and USPTO) the bibliographic data and electronic copies of the whole patent applications and granted patents, as soon as the domestic publication occurs. Since 2011, INPI is publishing the intermediate patent documents such as examination and search reports and granted patents at the internet by the e-patents platform.
Participation in international or regional activities and projects related to patent information
INPI participates in the LATIPAT, as the most active office, besides sending to WIPO’s PatentScope and ESPACENET the bibliographic data and electronic copies of the whole patent applications and granted patents.
The INPI also participates in PROSUL and IBEPI. PROSUL is a regional initiative on technical cooperation among the National Industrial Property Offices in South America. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Nicaragua and Uruguay are part of PROSUL. In the organization chart of PROSUL, there is a Patent Committee, which is responsible for cooperation in patent area and to discuss collaborative examination. There is also a Diffusion Technology Committee to develop the conversation about public domain. In 2016, there was the signature of the Project of Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) with PROSUL, envisaging to come into force in 2017.
The Ibero-American Industrial Property Program (IBEPI) exists under the Ibero-American General Secretary (SEGIB). Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Spain, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Dominican Republic and Uruguay are part of the group. In IBEPI, there is an Information Technology Committee, which produces thematic reports and discusses cooperation from the information contained in patent files. The group also maintains a Platform of Services to the Productive Sector – CIBEPYME. In 2016, IBEPI launched of two Bulletins of Technological Information, one on Agro foods and other on Wind Power.
Assistance to developing countries
Other activities
In January 11, 2016, came into force of the Project of Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) with the United States of America in the areas of oil and gas.
VII. OTHER RELATED MATTERS
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.
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.
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.