As agreed at the last IP5 meeting held in Washington (30 July - 03 August 2012), the IB prepared an initial draft of the DAS Service Level Agreement (DAS-SLA) for comments by IP5 Offices. A second draft version DAS-SLA 0.2 which took into account feedbacks by the EPO, the JPO and the USPTO was made on 16 November 2012 by the IB and no additional revision has been requested by IP5 Offices. However the JPO provided on 12 December 2012 the following aditional comment regarding the DAS SLA-Annex.

Current participating Offices and DAS Consultative Group members are welcome to comment on the second draft of the DAS-SLA by Friday January 18, 2013. If no further comment is received by the suggested timeline, the IB will publish this second revision as finalized version DAS-SLA 1.0.

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4 Comments

  1. Daniel CHENG

    "The JPO understands that even if DAS-SLA goes into effect, such duty as communication, which is described in the TDA-SLA, continues to be undertaken by WIPO. Therefore, the JPO would like WIPO to continue to notify the TDA participating Offices including the JPO of operational incidents and system maintenance, solely according to the TDA-SLA.

    Moreover, it would not be necessary to publish contact points and holidays of the participating Offices in DAS-SLA Annex to all the participating Offices as long as WIPO manages such information. It is because it is communicated only between WIPO and each participating Office, and basically DAS participating Offices would not be directly communicating each other.

    DAS system, that connects WIPO and each Office in one to one, is "star formed" in which each Office is making system connection only with WIPO. Therefore, one of the big advantages for the Offices is to operate it without being interrupted by the Office on the other side of the DAS system. If the contact points of all the participating Offices are published in DAS-SLA Annex, it is anticipated that some confusion in operation might arise when each Office tries to contact directly to the Office on the other side of the DAS system."

    Comments by the JPO received by the IB on December 12, 2012

  2. Daniel CHENG

    The IB has been dealing with operational issues since 2009 and requesting business support from participating Offices. In this regard, the IB has kept update to date the list of Office contact points. As the intention of the DAS SLA is to guarantee a minimum of responsiveness in issue reporting and investigation, general service hours provided by all participating Office with regard to the DAS operational and business support need to be formalized and communicated to the IB in the format of the TDA-SLA or DAS-SLA Annex. However, the IB has no objection to the JPO’s proposal of not publishing participating office contact details in the DAS-SLA Annex.

    1. Kaori Kojima

      Dear Daniel,

      Thank you for WIPO's coordination for DAS-SLA.
      The JPO agrees with DAS-SLA second draft version and annex in principle. Additionally, the JPO proposes a fomal modification as below;

       
      4.5 General Service Hours

       “General Service hours relating to WIPO-DAS operational and business support, WIPO-DAS administration and support are published in an annex (i.e. DAS-SLA-Annex) of this document using the same format as TDA-SLA annex.”

      Kaori

  3. Andrew gb-AHayes

    Daniel

    The UK IPO is boadly in agreement with the proposals in the DAS-SLA second draft version and annex, but would like cllarification on the points below:

    Can you please confirm that as WIPO hosts the UK digital library, any issue concerning the avaliability of a document which has been added to the library, we will be relient on WIPO in the first instance.

    With reference to section 5.1 and the attribution of a"retroactive" when an error occurs outside the applicants control.

     Attributing a retroactive date to the "das-register-date" as outlined in section 5.1 of the Agreement may cause problems for this Office if it results in a certificate (in accordance with paragraph 13 of the Framework Provisions) stating that a priority document was available before it was in fact available.

     The notification submitted by this Office to the IB on 30 September 2009 states:

     "The legal basis for recognition of priority documents made available through the service is Rule 8(4)(b) of the Patents Rules 2007, which waives the requirement for a copy of a priority application to be furnished where it is available to the comptroller.  Rule 2(3) states that a document is available to the comptroller where it is in electronic storage and he can access it by using electronic communications.

     In order for Rule 8(4)(b) to apply, the document must be available to the comptroller by the end of the period in which it would normally have to be furnished (“the relevant period”).  If a priority document temporarily cannot be retrieved by the Office from the service, but a certificate in accordance with paragraph 13 of the Framework Provisions states that the document was available to the Office before the end of the relevant period, the document may be retrieved later with no further action required by the applicant.

     If a priority document ultimately cannot be retrieved by the Office from the service, the applicant may be required to furnish a copy of the document in accordance with Rule 8(2) of the Patents Rules 2007.  If the priority document cannot be furnished before the end of the relevant period, the period can be extended in two month tranches in accordance with Rule 108."

     

    Therefore, the date given on any certificate under paragraph 13 of the Framework Provisions must, in our view, accurately reflect the date on which the document was available to the Office of Second Filing.

    Regards

    Andrew