Annual Technical Report 2003 on Industrial Design Information Activities submitted by Estonia (SCIT/ATR/ID/2003/EE)
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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 Estonian Patent Office received 157 registration applications of industrial designs which is 7% more than filed in 2002. Estonian industrial designs made up 29% of the total number of applications.
In 2003, the Estonian Patent Office registered 143 industrial designs in the state register of industrial designs (variants not included). 47% of the designs belong to Finnish owners, 22% to Estonian owners; German owners with 7% and Turkish owners with 4% follow them. The majority of industrial designs belong to the field of recording, communication or information retrieval (54 solutions). Other classes used more frequently are those of packages and containers (22), sanitary equipment (10) and furnishing (9). The majority of industrial designs registered by Estonian owners belong to the classes of packages and containers (6), furnishing (5), sales and advertising equipment (5) and building units and construction elements (5).
The number of registration applications pending in the Estonian Patent Office at the end of 2003 was 42. The average duration of the examination of industrial design registration application is 2 months.
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 official publication of the Estonian Patent Office is the Estonian Industrial Design Gazette.
The Statutes of the Estonian Industrial Design Gazette was confirmed by the Regulation of the Minister of Economics of May 15, 1998. The Estonian Industrial Design Gazette comprises of the following parts:
1) Registered industrial designs,
2) Renewal of term of industrial design,
3) Change in data relating to the registration of industrial design,
4) Transfer of rights of proprietor of industrial design into usufruct,
5) Deletion of industrial design registration,
6) Issue of a duplicate of industrial design certificate,
7) Lists,
8) Legal acts and information.
The Estonian Industrial Design Gazette is published 4 times a year.
Mass storage media is not in use yet.
III. Matters concerning classifying, reclassifying and indexing of industrial design information according to the classification systems applied
The Estonian Patent Office uses the International Classification for Industrial Designs (Locarno Agreement). The Republic of Estonia became party to the said Agreement on Oct. 31, 1996.
WIPO Standard St. 80 is used for bibliographic data coding.
IV. Search file establishment and upkeep
- database concerning processing of industrial design registration applications comprises of the files of industrial design registration applications.
- the card file of industrial designs are used for the purpose of trademark examination,
- the State Register of Industrial Designs.
V. Activities in the field of computerized search systems for industrial designs
In-house search system (offline) is under development phase.
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 computerised Estonian industrial designs database can be exploited at the reading room of the Estonian Patent Library. The searches are carried out at the request of the users and the customers pay a moderate price for the computerised services.
VII. Matters concerning mutual exchange of industrial design documentation and information
The Estonian Patent Library receives gazettes containing the information on industrial design from 33 IP offices, 30 titles are acquired by exchange and 3 titles by purchase.
At present information concerning the Estonian industrial design on machine-readable carriers is not being forwarded to our exchange partners.
VIII. Matters concerning education and training including technical assistance to developing countries
WIPO:
1. Seminar "A guide through IP documentation" (1 participant)
OHIM
1. Seminar ”Absolute grounds of refusal” (2 participants)
Other:
Language courses
1. advanced English language learning courses (2 participants)
2. advanced French language learning courses (17 participants)
3. The Estonian Patent Office took part of the fair “Intellektika 2003”, act with the exhibition and gave a lecture
Training course ”Management of product development” 12.-13.05.2003 Tallinn, (1 participant)
Training course “IT in public sector”” 22.05.2003 Tallinn, (2 participants)
Training course “Estonian new Trademark Act, trademark legal protection in EU” 03.11.2003 Tartu, (1 participant)
Libraries related:
4. Training course „Modern libraries in Finland” 13.05.2003 Helsinki (1 participant)
5. Training course „Modern library” 28.06.-05.07.2003 Germany (1 participant)
6. Seminar “Digital library and it’s user” 15.10.2003 Tallinn, (1 participant)
Customer training activities of the Estonian Patent Library in 2003.
In 2002, the Estonian Patent Library opened a special computerized public room for industrial property information training courses. Also IP information users can work online here individually.
In 2002 the Estonian Patent Library began with special training courses for entrepreneurs, named “Use of the industrial property information in the product development” and included 30 hours. In 2003 5 named training courses concerning IP information were carried out among patent attorneys, entrepreneurs and students. Also the subject matter of these courses is constantly revised and modified.
The aim of these training days (length up to one day) and training courses (length up to 5 days) is to highlight the impact of the use of information concerning patents, trademarks and industrial designs and they are arranged in the library or in centres of enterpreneurship.