Annual Technical Report 2003 on Industrial Design Information Activities submitted by Republic of Moldova (SCIT/ATR/ID/2003/MD)
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The expression "industrial designs" covers industrial designs and models. Offices which issue design patents should report their design patent information activities in this series of Annual Technical Reports.
I. Evolution of registration activities
In 2003, the AGEPI received 560 applications for the registration of 2224 industrial designs and 321 requests for renewal of 1008 industrial designs.
The national applicants filed 132 (23,6%) applications and 26 (8,1%) requests for renewal for 573 (17,7%) industrial designs, whilst the foreign ones proceeded with 428 (76,4%) and 295 (91,9%) respectively, for 2659 (82,3%) industrial designs.
According to the requested procedures of protection, the applications filed by foreign applicants are divided as follow: national procedure – 15 (3,5%) applications for 33 (1,9%) industrial designs and 6 (2,0%) requests for renewal for 7 (0,7%) industrial designs; procedure under the Hague Agreement - 413 (96,5%) applications for 1689 (98,1%) industrial designs and 289 (98,0%) requests for renewal for 930 (99,3%) industrial designs.
120 (81,6%) applications filed under the national procedure came from legal and 27 (18,4%) – from natural persons. This ratio is unessentially different from that of the last years.
From 107 applications filed by the national applicants - legal persons, 80 (74,8%) were submitted by limited liability companies, 24 (22,4%) by joint-stock companies and 3 (2,8%) by state enterprises.
The most active foreign applicants in 2003 were from Switzerland (250 applications – 580 industrial designs), France (99 – 536), Germany (69 – 536), Italy (27 – 117), Netherlands (14 – 28).
Primarily requested fields of protection were: watches and watches accessories (208 applications - 509 industrial designs); ornamental objects (23 - 196); textiles (11 - 294); clothing (20 -210); electronic apparatus (24 - 75); bottles (21 – 66); clothing accessories (10 -241); heating equipment (5 – 37); footwear (5 - 63).
In 2003, 85 certificates for registration of 209 industrial designs were issued. The absolute majority of the issued certificates were held by national owners – 84 (98,8%).
The analysis of the industrial designs domain highlights the broad interest of the national applicants towards protection of bottles (36 certificates – 56 industrial designs), labels (16 certificates – 44 industrial designs), footwear (5 certificates – 34 industrial designs).
Concomitantly with the issuance of certificates for registration, the AGEPI granted 29 certificates for renewal of 71 industrial designs. 24 (82,8%) certificates for 65 (91,5%) industrial designs were issued to national owners and 5 (17,2%) for 6 (8,5%) industrial designs to foreign owners.
II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, and distribution of industrial design documents and of secondary sources of industrial design information, i.e., official gazettes
The most important publications in the field of industrial design documentation are the following:
The Official Bulletin of Industrial Property Protection (BOPI);
The National Industrial Designs Register;
The National Industrial Designs Applications Register.
Both Registers are published on paper carrier.
BOPI includes Sections VI with information on industrial designs and models, from January 2000 onwards and are available online via our AGEPI web site at www.agepi.md in portable document format (PDF).
Section VI contains:
- FF4L Registered industrial designs (bibliographic data and graphic reproduction);
- FG4L List of industrial design certificates issued in …(date of issuing);
- FG4L List of renewal industrial designs;
- FG4L Numerical Index of industrial designs registered in the Republic of Moldova according to the Hague Agreement;
- FG4L Subject Index of industrial designs registered in the Republic of Moldova according to the Hague Agreement;
- NZ4L List of industrial designs renewed in the Republic of Moldova according to the Hague Agreement.
Section VII contains various types of notices referring to all amendments relating to the legal status of the protected industrial property objects (List of amendments, List of assignment agreements, Errata, etc), etc.
As from 2002, searches related to industrial designs, registered in the Republic of Moldova and published in BOPI, can be performed on line via our web site www.agepi.md. The Collection contains graphic reproductions of the industrial designs and bibliographic data of the products.
III. Matters concerning classifying, reclassifying and indexing of industrial design information according to the classification systems applied
Republic of Moldova became a state party to the Locarno Agreement Establishing an International Classification for Industrial Designs (1968) on December 1, 1997.
The Agency uses the International Classification for Industrial Designs since 1994. All the documents are classified according to the Locarno Classification. The full texts (Romanian and Russian) of the Locarno Classification were published in BOPI.
The classification symbols (the 8th edition of the Classification) of an application are allotted by the applicant. It is up to the Agency to afterwards check, and eventually to correct, the classification symbols.
The classification is used for the novelty examination, for search purposes and for statistics.
IV. Search file establishment and upkeep
At the disposal of examiners in their daily practice, there are the following databases:
- National automated searchable database “Industrial Design”, supporting a number of search fields;
- International applications received in the International Design Bulletin (paper form and CD-ROM);
- Card - files of industrial designs grouped by categories of the Locarno Classification, of the following countries: BY, BG, FI, HR, HU, LT, MK, RO, RU, SK, TJ, UA, UZ. (from 1994 onwards).
The searches cover a period of 10 years for the collection of industrial designs registered under the national procedure and - 15 years for the collection of industrial designs registered under the Hague Agreement.
Moreover, the manual paper search files consist of special books, periodicals, booklets, and a number of other lists and sources.
The examiner’s search files are updated on a regular basis.
V. Activities in the field of computerized search systems for industrial designs
In 2002 the interface for on-line searches in Data Base “Industrial Design” available in Romanian, English and Russian, was put into operation. At present, the “Industrial designs” Data Base contains information on the applications filed from 1993 up to date and on the registered objects. The users have access to the bibliographic data, images of industrial designs, for which the decision to register the industrial design has been taken. From 2003, in the procedure of examination, CD-ROM BOPI_RO has been used also (before 2003, the paper version of BOPI of Romania was used).
Several work stations were modernized, offering thus, from the technical point of view, sufficient possibilities of homogenizing the working environment, the operation and application software used within the Agency, namely the installation of the Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional and the MS Office 2000 Professional. All examiners have access to the Internet at their desks.
Equipment used: The internal network uses a client-server arrangement on an Ethernet LAN running Microsoft Active Directory Domain. The platform used by the Industrial Design Section uses a database server, for Interbase applications. Client PCs are used by all staff and are Pentium III or Pentium IV machines with a mixture of 15" or 17" CRT screens. Client PCs operating systems Microsoft Windows 2000 or Microsoft Windows XP. The Software specific of the CD-ROM is “International Design Bulletin”.
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)
The office library functions simultaneously as an in-house and public library, open to a wide range of patent information users of the Republic of Moldova.
The library specialists are available to assist the public in all aspects of their work with catalogues, CD-ROMs, books, etc. The AGEPI Library is available to the public during 6 days (except Sunday) from 9:00 to 16:00.
Collection management, preservation
The Library collection is arranged along geographical-systematic-numerical lines. The conditions for storing collections correspond to the types of information carriers used:
- patent documentation on paper is stored in cassettes on shelves;
- on CD-ROM – in catalog racks;
- in automated databases.
The Library Soft “IRBIS”, for acquisition processes automation, formation of electronic catalogue “Books” and library administration, is implemented in the AGEPI Library.
The AGEPI Collection on CD/DVD-ROM available to the public is shown in the attached Table II.
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 AGEPI Library has a general and a specialized reading room.
Visits to the patent Library and services offered to all categories of readers are free of charge.
The Library also provides, by payment, such services as copying the documents from CD-ROM/DVD-ROM on paper or on CD / DVD-ROM (in 2003 – 4212 documents), copying the documents form the Library paper Collection; selling the AGEPI editions.
The main features regarding the library-information services rendered in 2003 are the following: readers- 531; visits – 5882; borrowed documents – 45322.
During the year 2003, the AGEPI has rendered to the economic agents over 1130 consultations on the procedure for obtaining industrial property rights, organized many visits to the enterprises; it rendered a double volume of search services in the IPP field as compared with the previous year.
Information about the new acquisitions in the library collection is systematically offered on the AGEPI web site. The information provided on the AGEPI web site – www.agepi.md – covers all general topics concerning patents (national and international legislation, preparation of application, office procedures, application forms).
VII. Matters concerning mutual exchange of industrial design documentation and information
In the year 2003, the process for completion and development of the literature and document collection in the industrial property protection field continued on the basis of a bilateral exchange with 44 foreign patent and trademark offices. The acquisition of literature in the field via libraries, Publications and book exhibitions, by subscription to periodical publications from the country and from abroad also continued on the basis of periodicals published by the AGEPI - in total over 80 sources.
The Official Bulletin (BOPI) was received in 2003 by bilateral exchange from 25 countries in paper form and from 6 countries on CD-ROM (in total 889 Official Bulletins); 1173 CD-ROMs have been acquired in 2003 by bilateral exchange, as well as, 647 books and 2487 periodicals.
The Agency has furnished BOPI- Official Bulletins to 39 countries (468 copies) and 4 international organizations (48 copies). The CD-ROMs “Inventions of the Republic of Moldova” and “IP Legislation of the Republic of Moldova” were delivered to 25 countries.
VIII. Matters concerning education and training including technical assistance to developing countries
During the year 2003, the AGEPI organized on industrial property protection matters 16 national seminars and 5 seminars in cooperation with regional and international organizations. The AGEPI staff participated in 53 international events such trainings, meetings, seminars, symposia, works, consultations, official visits etc. in the field.
Concomitantly, the AGEPI has held specialized courses for judges, customers, councilors in industrial property and managers of economic units of the republic.
During the year 2003, the Office participated in 18 national exhibitions and granted logistical and financial assistance for the participation of inventors in 4 international exhibitions (“Inventica”-Iaşi, Romania; “Brussels-Eureka”, Belgium; “PALEXPO” – Geneva, Switzerland; International Fair of Industrial Technologies, Methods of Production, Goods and Services from CIS Member States – Kiev, Ukraine).
The communications, interviews, reports (circa 400) made or given by the AGEPI specialists to journalists from 45 journals of the Republic, including 4 press conferences organized on the occasion of key events, 41 articles on the AGEPI activity and IPP issues, photo-video recordings placed in the national Press, Radio and TV, Internet and other information sources contributed essentially to IP promotion throughout the country.