Annual Technical Report 2013 on Patent Information Activities submitted by Israel (CWS/ATR/PI/2013/IL)

 

Where URLs are requested below, it is preferred that either URLs which are likely to remain stable over time (three years or more) are provided, or home (main) page URLs are provided with a short explanation of how to access the corresponding information.

The term "patent" covers utility models and Supplementary Protection Certificates (SPCs). Offices which issue design patents should report their design patent information activities in their Annual Technical Reports on Industrial Design Information Activities.

 

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

The ILPO is in the process of developing a new automated system for processing national applications. The system will enable the e-filing of patent applications and electronic (incoming/outgoing) correspondence between the ILPO and the applicants. The system is expected to be fully operative at the end of 2014.

Main areas of patent information activities and related information and communication technology (ICT) practices which were in the focus of attention last year

In August 2012 amendment no. 10 of the Patents Law came into force. This amendment has many implications on the operations of the ILPO and particularly with regard to the opening of patent application dossiers to public access as of 18 months following the date of priority (prior to this amendment, only accepted applications were open to public access). By enacting this order of transparency Israel has joined the accepted standard in this regard around the world by allowing free access to the application dossiers on the ILPO's website. For this purpose, the ILPO conducted in 2012 a special project in which about 35,000 file-wrappers were scanned. Following the project, the patent department (including both substantive and formality examiners) started working in a paperless environment. Since then, the Patent Formalities Department has taken charge of scanning all the incoming paper documents.
In 2013 the ILPO has started receiving patent applications and incoming documents from applicants on digital media, in addition to paper documents, following an amendment to the Patent Regulations.

Statistics: changes in terms of application filings and grants with respect to previous year; trends or areas experiencing rapid changes

National applications filed:
6,184 in 2013
6,793 in 2012
6,886 in 2011

Patents granted:
3,698 in 2013
3,386 in 2012
5,104 in 2011

International applications filed (at RO):
1,199 in 2013
967 in 2012
1,060 in 2011
The number of accelerated examinations of patent applications has increased continuously.

Since June 2012, the ILPO has started operating as an International Authority (IA) for Searching and Preliminary Examination of international applications. In 2013, more than 58% of the international applications of Israeli applicants designated the ILPO as ISA/IPEA.

Other matters and useful links (URLs): annual report of the Office, news page, statistics, etc.

URL to the ILPO website:
www.patents.gov.il

URL to ILPO Annual Report (English):
http://index.justice.gov.il/En/Units/ILPO/About/Pages/Annualreport.aspx

URL to the ILPO search engine for national applications:
http://www.ilpatsearch.justice.gov.il/UI/MainPage.aspx

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

Information on filing and processing national and international patent applications, legal information and contact list are available on the following website:
http://www.patents.gov.il/

Availability of the application dossier in electronic form

Access to the published patent application dossiers and Legal Status is available from the following website:
http://www.ilpatsearch.justice.gov.il/UI/MainPage.aspx

Classification1, preclassification2 (if applicable), reclassification3 activities; classification systems used (e.g., International Patent Classification (IPC)); matters concerning indexing of patent information

1. The national and international applications are classified only according to the IPC.

2. The patent applications of the national phase of international applications are pre-classified according to the classification published in the international reports. The other applications are pre-classified by a classification team.

3. During the substantive examination of patent applications, all the applications are re-classified by the examiner according to the last version of the claims set.

Abstracting, reviewing, and translation of the information contained in patent documents

The vast majority of our patent applications are in English.

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)

The bibliographic data and the patent application documents (description, claims, drawings and sequences) are sent to WIPO and EPO on a monthly basis in XML format.

Official Gazettes: main types of announcements, frequency of publication, medium (on paper, on CDs, online – URL), etc.

Official Gazette is published monthly on the ILPO website (see below) and contains searchable bibliographic data of filed as well as accepted applications, granted applications, extended applications, and notices of register changes.

http://www.patents.gov.il/

Information products and patent document collections (coverage, medium, etc.) available to examiners, including external collections and databases

In-house system:
We utilize an internal system developed in conjunction with WIPO, containing all bibliographic data, documents (description, claims, drawings and sequences) and incoming/outgoing correspondence of national applications.

External databases:
 THOMSON INNOVATION (including Derwent World Patent Index (DWPI), non-patent literature search and Asian translation collection)
 STN databases
 EPOQUE NET
 QUESTEL

Legal status information (kind of information, coverage, medium, etc.)

Legal status information for each application can be inspected on the ILPO website:
http://www.ilpatsearch.justice.gov.il/UI/MainPage.aspx

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

1. The automated system for processing national applications maintains the register, legal status and administrative support management. Business Intelligence (BI) reports are also provided by the automated system to collect and analyze statistical data.

2. Concerning the examination of international applications, the ILPO has developed a modern and efficient automation system entitled PCT SAPIA (System for Administration and Processing of International Applications) to handle the processing of international applications electronically and to provide automatic quality checking of the formality examination at the RO stage as well as the formality and substantive examination at the ISA and IPEA stages. This system implements a full scale of automated validations and guidance for the examiner (including warnings for nonconforming cases), thus preventing him from making mistakes and ensuring integrity of the reports, and sends alerts to the division directors in cases where the due dates are not met. This system provides electronic sampling of 100% of the applications. The business rules implemented in this system are designed to ensure the integrity and quality of the international reports produced electronically as well as work efficiency.

Hardware used to supporting business processes of the Office

The current ILPO system was developed in the Microsoft .Net environment with Client/Server architecture using a Microsoft SQL Server 2008 database.
The ILPO patent examiners are equipped with workstations with the Windows 7 Operating System and the Windows 2008 Server. Each workstation is connected to the Citrix virtual environment and has a CD-ROM drive and Internet access through a high-speed connection. This provides patent examiners with the necessary facilities to conduct search and examination.
The ILPO implemented many international standards for improving efficiency, availability, flexibility, scalability and manageability of its systems.

The ILPO's Service Management implements the ITIL Standard (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) the most widely accepted approach to IT service management in the world. The ILPO adopted a disaster recovery policy and has implemented GeoCluster which protects the organization from equipment failures, power outages and natural disasters.
The ILPO's Server farm contains HP Blade servers that are managed under VMware which provides a completely virtualized set of hardware. Its website operates on a very high data security level, using several firewalls and strict security policy.

Internal databases: coverage, updates, interlinks with external sources

The electronic database of national applications is directly updated by the internal automation system (for internal search). The database accessed by the website is daily updated (for external search).

Establishment and maintenance of electronic search file: file building, updating, storage, documents from other offices included in the search file

All the electronic files of the patent applications (including bibliographic data, description, claims, drawings since 1970) and the incoming/outgoing correspondence (since 2012) are stored in the servers of the Ministry of Justice. In addition, all the documents in hard copy are still maintained in an external archive.
The electronic database of national applications is directly updated by the internal automation system (for internal search). The database accessed by the website is daily updated (for external search).

Administrative management electronic systems (register, legal status, statistics, and administrative support)

See section 4.1 above

V. PROMOTION ACTIVITIES AIMED TO SUPPORT USERS IN ACCESS AND EFFICIENT USE OF PATENT INFORMATION

Publications related to different business procedures and patent information sources available to users, for example, books, brochures, Internet publications, etc.

The ILPO has a bilingual web site (English & Hebrew) for the public containing all relevant patent information (guidance for filing and processing national and international applications, legal information and contact list).

Cooperation with universities, research centers, technology and innovation support centers, etc.

An examiner from the ILPO acted as a co-supervisor for undergraduate students in the field of patents. This project was done in cooperation with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Education and training: training courses, e-learning modules (URLs), seminars, exhibitions, etc.

1. The ILPO periodically provides training courses for patent, trademarks and PCT receiving office staff, as well as for the public. These training courses and seminars are on the topics of (but not limited to) search databases, international classification, international search and examination, the Madrid protocol and advanced knowledge of the PCT. All training courses and seminars utilized PowerPoint presentations, whereas some, such as the international search and examination seminar, included written exercises. Some of the training courses were held in conjunction with WIPO, local patent attorneys, academic institutions and additional government offices, such as the WIPO Workshop on Effective Intellectual Property Asset Management by Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) held June 29-30, 2012 in Tel Aviv, and a seminar on Intellectual Property law and development – the road ahead; Traditional Knowledge and access to knowledge.

2. Examiners from the ILPO prepared presentations for high school students in the field of intellectual property. This activity was aimed at increasing awareness to intellectual property rights and their protection, emphasizing the relevance of intellectual property in daily life.

3. Examiners from the ILPO participated in scientific activities in the Joseph Meyerhoff Youth Center for Advanced Studies in the Hebrew University for young students.

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

The ILPO provides bibliographic data of patent applications, as well as full text data (description, claims, drawings and sequences) of accepted applications to WIPO and EPO.

Participation in international or regional activities and projects related to patent information

1. The ILPO database manager participated in the EPO Patent Information Conference, 22-24 October 2013, Bologna, Italy.

2. The ILPO database manager participated in the course of "Training the trainer on EPOQUE Net" organized by the European Patent Academy on 21-24 May 2013, Netherlands.

Other activities

In 2013, the ILPO organized a week training course in the field of pharmaceutics and chemistry in conjunction with the WIPO worldwide training academy. This course constitutes the practical part of the interregional seminar on industrial property, preceded by the first part of this seminar, which takes place at the WIPO worldwide training academy in Geneva. This course provides training to trainees from different countries regarding the Israeli legislation and practice in the examination of national as well as international applications. The course covered issues related to the substantive and formality examination of patent applications as well as legal and professional issues arising while registering intellectual property rights in Israel. The interns also learn about the organizational structure of the ILPO and its various departments: Patents, PCT, Patent Formalities and the Legal department.

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.