SCIT.ATR.PI.2003.SK

Annual Technical Report 2003 on Patent Information Activities submitted by Slovakia (SCIT/ATR/PI/2003/SK)

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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. Evolution of patent activities

Changes experienced in terms of application filings and grants with respect to the previous year

Patents

There were 1 647 patent applications filed in 2003 that is decrease by 11.4 % in comparison with the year 2002. The PCT applications form 84.7 % (1 395 ) of all applications. At the same time, the number of PTC applications grew by 9 % to the figure of 85 222, in which SR is the designated country. The total number of patent applications filed by domestic applicants decreased by 18.5 %. The largest share of the total number 1 435 of foreign applications have Germany (385), USA (297) and France (100).
One European patent application was filed.
652 patents were granted that is a slight decrease by 5.1 %.

There were 8 application of SPC’s filed in 2003. All of them are from foreign applicants, the most number is from the USA - 4 applications. There were 7 SPC's granted.

By 31. December 2003 there were 3 695 valid patents in Slovak Republic.


Utility models

There were 338 utility model applications filed in the Office in 2003. This number decreased by 10.3 % in comparison with previous year. Similarly, the number of applications filed by the Slovak applicants decreased by 8.1 % (271 applications). The share of the Slovak applicants in total number of 338 applications is 80.2 %. A greater drop occurred in number of registered utility models (273). Decrease 9,3 % is mainly caused by domestic applicants which creates 77 % of all applicants. A significant decrease 23.2 % has been recorded in the number of registered utility models of foreign applicants.

Almost 21 % registered utility models are from the branch of civil engineering and transport, fewer from inorganic chemistry, lighting and heating, general engineering, personal and domestic articles.

In comparison with the statistics of the years 1999-2003 there are following results in utility model area.

By 31. December 2003 there were 1 589 valid utility models in the Slovak Republic.

Tables_1 - Patents statistical data Tables_2 - Utility models statistical data

Trends or areas experiencing rapid changes with respect to the previous year

Patents
Application in the field of organic chemistry (34 %) and medical, dental and hygienic preparations (21 %) have the largest share. No substantial changes in any area have been noted in comparison with respect to the previous year.

Utility models
Almost 21 % registered utility models are from the branch of civil engineering and transport, fewer from inorganic chemistry, lighting and heating, general engineering, personal and domestic articles. No substantial changes in any area have been noted in comparison with respect to the previous year.

Diagram - Applications according to IPC fields

II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, distribution and use of primary and secondary sources of patent information

Publishing, printing, copying (main types of publications of the office in the field of patent information, etc.)

Main types of official publications:

 Official Gazette “Vestník ÚPV SR“

 patent documents (codes of documents according to the WIPO ST.16):

- published patent applications A3
- patent specifications B6
- supplementary protection certificates without code
- translations of patent claims of European patent application T1
- corrected translations of patent claims of European patent applicationT2
- translations of European patent specification T3
- corrected translations of European patent specification T4
- translations of modified wording of European patent specification T5
- corrections of patent documents A8, A9, B8, B9, U8, U9, T8, T9

Patents and utility models information forms part of the Official Gazette - “ Vestník ÚPV SR”, covering all industrial property rights in one publication. Paper form issued monthly is published in standard size A4, paperback and usually in cca 300 pages. In 2003 the Gazette had a circulation of 250 copies, of which 113 were distributed by subscription. Other copies were sent free of charge to patent information centres and contact and information points of the IPO, within the frame of industrial property information exchange to foreign offices and as the statutory copies according to the act as well. Electronic form of Official Gazette, available to the public in the Internet free of charge, contains searchable data..

The following numbers of documents were published in the Official Gazette in 2003:

Patent applications 1 678
Patent specifications 883
Utility models 292

Distribution

The Office distributed Slovak patent specifications to patent information centres and contact and information points of the IPO to build the territorial fund of the national patent documentation and to the IPO of the Czech Republic within the frame of exchange as well. Slovak patents published on ESPACE-PRECES CD-ROM are being distributed by the Hungarian Patent Office to foreign patent offices within the frame of mutual patent information exchange. The Official Gazette “Vestník ÚPV SR” has been distributed within the frame of mutual exchange to 32 countries including organizations EPO and WIPO last year.

Main types of announcements of the Office in the field of patent information

The Gazette contains patent announcements arranged in following main chapters:

- list of published patent applications (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data and abstracts of published patent applications with an image,where available (arranged according to the International Patent Classification)
- list of granted patents (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of granted patents (arranged according to the International Patent Classification)
- bibliographic data of translations of patent claims of European patent applications (arranged according to the International Patent Classification)
- bibliographic data of European patent specifications (arranged according to the document numbers)
- bibliographic data of published applications for granting the supplementary protection certificates (arranged according to the document numbers)
- bibliographic data of granted supplementary protection certificates (arranged according to the document numbers)
- list of registered utility models (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of registered utility models (arranged according to the
International Patent Classification)
- official decisions (revocation, cancellation, etc.)
- assignments of rights and other changes of owners
- extension of the term of validity of the utility models registration
- licence contract registered in the register
- the right of lien

Mass storage media used (paper, microforms, optical storage, etc.)

Patent documents are available in paper form in the Office’s library and, in addition, patent specifications are available also in electronic form in the Office’s web site as well as on ESPACE-PRECES CD-ROM (Patents from the Region of Eastern and Central European States). As an index to this fulltext CD-ROM is ESPACE ACCESS PRECES (complete bibliographic information) used.

Word processing and office automation

Word processing and office automation is ensured by application over the patent and utility models database.

(New) techniques used for the generation of patent information (printing, recording, photocomposing, etc.)

MS Office 97, QuarkXpress 5.0 for Windows and Corel Draw 10, Photoshop 6.0, FineReader 6.0, Adobe Acrobat 5.05 CE, SLEX99 – Lexicon of Slovak Language are used for the data processing; the photocomposing and printing is carried out by the Office.

The Desk-Top Publishing technology is used for data and images processing, for the Gazette and first pages of the patent documents.

III. Matters concerning abstracting, classifying, reclassifying and indexing of technical information contained in patent documents

Abstracting, reviewing, translating

Abstracts printed on the first pages of patent documents as well as a part of official announcements are revised and in case of need corrected by the Office’s experts before publication of application. Abstracts appear only in case of patent application publications in the Official Gazette. The English translation of abstracts are being sent to the EPIDOS for the ESPACE-PRECES CD-ROM production and publication in the database esp@cenet.

Classification and reclassification activities; Classification system used, e.g., International Patent Classification (IPC), other classification (please indicate whether or not patent documents are classified by your Office and, if so, which classification is used)

The applications are classified and reclassified by office´s experts according to the International Patent Classification - Int.Cl.7. The WIPO Standards ST.8 and ST.10/C are also used for these purposes. Reclassifying is carried out before granting of patent.

Hybrid system indexing

For indexing of technical information contained in patent documents the hybrid systems of the IPC are used.

Bibliographic data and full-text processing for search purposes

The WIPO Standard ST. 9 is used for patent and utility model bibliographic data coding in all relevant outcomes or records. All bibliographic data are being processed in electronic database form. The fully searchable data are updated and made available to the public each 15 minutes in the Internet.

The Office, in co-operation with the IPO of the Czech Republic, continued in digitalisation of the former Czechoslovak patent documents. The digitalisation was technically supported by the EPO in the framework of the bilateral co-operation programme. The digitalisation itself is executed in two phases. The first phase includes the processing of bibliografic data of the former Czechoslovak patent documents before 1919; this phase was completed when the last batch of the total number 270.000 documents was converted into WIPO ST.32 standard exchange data format. The second phase includes production of the full text facsimiles, including document indexing. In this way the Office processed entire Slovak patent documentation dated back to 1993. Then followed the scanning of the former Czechoslovak patent documents dated to the period between 1970 and 1980. The process is expected to be ended in 2004.

IV. Search file establishment and upkeep

File building

The patent documentation search file used by the patent examiners and the technical public contains patent documents from 26 countries, the EPO and the WIPO, patent gazettes from 33 countries, including the EPO and the WIPO and the non-patent literature (53 titles technical periodicals and 7669 titles special monographies).

Updating

Updating of patent documentation search file is performed regularly according to current technical possibilities.

Storage, including mass storage media

The basis of the patent fund forms the collection stored on the paper medium (cca 10 millions documents). However the majority of the patent documentation is currently received on electronic carriers. In 2003 the total number of optical discs collection reached the limit 10.000 and the regular annual accession reached 851 pieces of optical discs with full texts and bibliographic information concerning the patent documents.

Documentation from other offices maintained and/or considered part of the available search file

In 2003, within the frame of mutual exchange, the IPO SR received patent and utility model gazettes from the following states and organizations: AT, AU, BA, BG, BR, CH, CZ, DE, EE, EG, ES, FI, FR, GB, HR, HU, IT, KG, LT, LV, MD, MK, NO, PL, PT, RO, RU, Sl, SM, UA, US, EPO and WIPO.

IPO SR is maintaining the patent documentation collection stored in paper form, which forms, as a part of PCT minimum documentation, the basis of search files within the range:

- from 1950 to 1990: the documentation DD (from 1958), DE (from 1951), CH (from 1944), FR (from 1945), GB (from 1967), PL (from 1963), SU (from 1941), US (from 1960) and the documentation EPO (from 1978) and WIPO (from 1978)
- from 1919 to the present: national documentation SK and formal CS
- from 1993 to the present: national documentation CZ

V. Activities in the field of computerized and other mechanized search systems

In-house systems (online/offline)

Office is keeping and creating national search database on granted patents, published patent applications and registered utility models. Nowadays, selected data are also available through Internet.

It is possible to carry out searches according to bibliographic data in all the databases used for granted patents, published patent applications and registered utility models.

Following search CD-ROM are used through the local CD-ROM network by the
Ultranet 2000 system:

ESPACE - ACCESS EP - A
ESPACE - ACCESS EP - B
ESPACE – ACCESS - EUROPE
ESPACE – ACCESS - PRECES
ESPACE – ACCESS - RUSSIA
ESPACE – BULLETIN
PCT Gazette
GLOBALPAT
PAJ
ESPACE - LEGAL
IPC CLASS 2000
WIPO Handbook
List of Blue sheets Espace CD ROM
ECLA Classification in PDF format
legal and economic information, encyclopedia and statistics

External databases

Searches carried out in the STN on-line service, access to DERWENT, INPADOC, CAS and the like databases.

Using the esp@cenet Internet database and other free available databases of the national offices (e.g. Czech patent and utility models database) and WIPO.

Administrative management systems (e.g., register, legal status, statistics, administrative support, etc.)

The Office automation management system contains patent and utility models registry (data since 1993 – patents, data since 1992 – utility models, ) using “INVENTIO” software.

Administrative management system based on Lotus Domino.

Equipment used (hardware, including the types of terminal and network used, and software), carriers used

Fast ETHERNET 1000/100/10 Mbit/s, WINDOWS 2000 for servers; workstations PC Pentium, Windows 2000, HP Unix for database, Informix Dynamic Server 9.21, Citrix Metaframe 1.8.

VI. Administration of the industrial property office library and services available to the public (relating to facilities, e.g., for lodging applications, for assisting clients on searching procedures, for obtaining official publications and registry extracts)

Planning, administration, automation, security, buildings

In 2003, the office’s reading room has been visited by 2028 users and 1539 of them were from the public. In total there were provided 9671 borrowings of patent and other literature made available to the public and 31558 copies of patent documents for the manual and computer search purposes, as well as copies from technical periodicals and other associated and non-patent literature were made. In 2003 there were performed 296 patent searches, 2627 trademark searches and 74 design searches based on 1200 written and 136 personally requests.

The office’s reading room including the search workstation opens daily from 8:00 to 15:00 except the Wednesday (8:00-16:00).

All online services and other basic information are available via Internet address of IPO SR: www.upv.sk.

Collecting, acquisitions, preparation

In the last year were processed 20.360 patent documents in paper form and 851 optical discs containing full texts and bibliographic information relating to patent documents as well to made them available for search purposes. The entire acquisition of patent documents amounted to 1 455.877 documents, out of which 1 435.517 entries represented documents in electrical form. In addition, there were stored 11.243 first pages of Slovak and Czech patent documents according to additional IPC symbols into the systematical fund. Other new entries, for instance Official Gazettes (35) of the foreign offices and miscellaneous associated literature, were processed on the monthly basis.

The patent literature (patent documentation and official gazettes) were acquired within the frame of mutual exchange and the non-patent literature mostly by purchase and by subscription or as a gift.

Interlibrary lending, resource sharing, networks of patent libraries in the country

In 2003, four patent information centres and 10 contact and information points of the IPO SR were established under assistance of the EPO for the purpose of raising awareness about IP rights,. The new form of co-operation was iniciated by Office with regional, state and district libraries; with the State Scientific Library in Banská Bystrica and Košice and with other libraries in Zvolen, Žilina, Prešov, Trenčín, Trnava a Nitra as well as Slovak National Library in Martin and Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information in Bratislava.

Patent information centres
The main goal of patent information centres is to provide complex information services in the field of patent, trademark and industrial design information, search services, consultation and methodical assistance concerning the searching of information, making copies of required patent documents, printing records from electronic form etc. Every patent information centre serve as a contact and information point.

Contact and information points
The main goal of contact and information points of the Office is to inform the public about where can apply for protection of the results of creative activity, and particularly to inform the general public about the existence of the national institution, which protects immaterial goods, industrial property.

The Office supported the activity of centres and contact and information points by regular sending Slovak patent specifications in paper also on optical discs (fulltext ESPACE-PRECES CD-ROM, bibliographic data thereof on ESPACE ACCESS PRECES ) as well as announcements concerning industrial property rights in the Official Gazette form, all information materials and recources made available to the public, publications published by Office, information pamphlets, documents and forms relating to applying for protection of industrial property rights, access to office´s databases via Internet etc.

Information services available to the public (including computerized services and search files contained in libraries remote from your Office and patent information posted by your Office on the World Wide Web)

The library provides following services to the public:

- lending service (patent documents, Gazettes) in the reading room
- reprographic services upon request or on the place
- sale of special monographies and periodical publications (“Intellectual Property”, “Vestník ÚPV SR”)
- interlibrary lending service
- international interlibrary lending service
- searches: state of the art, patent families, bibliographic data upon request in written or on-line form
- monitoring of the state of selected technical fields upon request (permanent sending of documents)
- CD-ROM workstations available in the reading room
- methodical and consultation assistance for the public

Patent information on the World Wide Web:

- general information
- information about Office activities (seminars, training courses, etc.)
- application guide and forms
- relevant laws
- Annual Reports
- selected registry data
- patent specifications (meanwhile since 1993)
- Official Gazette
- order forms (searches, non-patent literature)
- products and services
- IPC (7-th edition)

VII. Matters concerning mutual exchange of patent documentation and information

International or regional cooperation in the exchange of machine-readable information, e.g., bibliographic data, abstract and/or full text information

Regional co-operation

In 2003 IPO SR continued in participation in the joint ESPACE PRECES CD-ROM project (patent specifications of BG, CZ, HU, LT, LV, PL, RO and SK).

International co-operation

Bibliographic data and abstracts of the published patent applications and granted patents in English were supplied to the EPIDOS database in electronic form.

In 2003 followed the mutual exchange of patent documentation and official gazettes between the IPO SR and other offices also international organizations, including the EPO and the WIPO.

Medium used for exchange of priority documents

Priority documents have been supplied to applicants on request in paper form.

Medium allowed for filing applications

Patent and utility model applications are filled in paper form.

Implementation of the Statement of Principles Concerning the Changeover to Electronic Data Carriers for the Exchange of Patent Documents (please make a status report on the extent to which your Office has changed over to electronic data carriers for the exchange of patent documents)

The IPO SR fully accepted change-over to electronic data carriers. The exchange of the patent documents in paper form was terminated by the end of 2000. Beginning from 2001 the IPO has been realizing the exchange of patent documents only on electronic data carriers.

VIII. Other relevant matters concerning education and training in, and promotion of, the use of patent information, including technical assistance to developing countries

Training courses for national participants

Four Module Accredited COURSE ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY conducted by the Intellectual Property Institute of the Industrial Property Office for office employees and professional public continued in 2003 with 42 participants, out of which 27 employees of IPO SR. An excursion to M.O.C Stará Turá – a factory manufacturing dental and medical machinery – was introduced for the first time in order to become acquainted with IP processes in SMEs conditions.

Supporting activities:

CONFERENCE
The Conference on INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN SLOVAKIA IV. was organized by the office celebrating April 26, the World Intellectual Property Day. The conference was attended by 20 lecturers and more than 60 participants, out of which 36 external ones.

The Conference on INNOVATORY ACTIVITIES IN SLOVAKIA in the framework of UMINEX exhibition with exchange of practical information among 10 lecturers and 60 participants was organized by IPO SR.
Two day seminar on ENFORCEMENT OF IP RIGHTS for judges with 13 lecturers, 3 judges and 40 other participants, mainly from the Bureau of Customs was organized by IPO SR.

LECTURES
Lectures outside Industrial Property Office SR for seminars covering IP rights and their enforcement.

Lectures for students of economic, technical, pedagogical, environmental and law faculties of universities in Slovakia.

Special lectures in cooperation with the Slovak Association of Inventors and Innovators, Chamber of Patent Attorneys aimed at ministries and branches of economy and defense.
JOURNAL
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY magazine (“Duševné vlastníctvo”) published by Industrial Property Office was issued 4 times in 2003 covering all relevant fields in IP rights, copyright, trade names, domain names, logos, licenses, creativity and management with 50 original extensive papers and a number of translations, news, decisions of Industrial Property Office, Grur International and Supreme court etc.

EXHIBITIONS
Participation at INCHEBA Fair in Bratislava, the International Engineering Fair in Nitra, the FOR ARCH Fair in Banská Bystrica, IENA Fair in Nűrnberg (Germany) and EUREKA in Brussells (Belgium) with aim to provide free information and consultations in IP field.
Organisation of the third exhibition UmInEx - national invention and technical novelties exhibition in Banská Bystrica.

PUBLICATIONS
Updates of brochures on Industrial Property Office ACTIVITIES, PATENTS, UTILITY MODELS, TRADEMARKS, DESIGNS, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES and OFFICE HOME PAGE were published for the purposes of awareness campaign aimed at universities, SMEs, regional libraries, companies and broad public.
The Office issued publication 10 YEARS OF IPO SR on the occasion of decennial activity of IPO SR.
In June the first COLLECTION OF SELECTED DECISIONS of IPO SR was issued.
Two new publications covering Slovak translation OF LEGAL REGULATIONS VALID IN THE EUROPEAN UNION IN INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY FIELD and CONVENTION ON GRANTING EUROPEAN PATENTS as well as eighth edition of INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNS (Locarno classification) were issued.
Two COLLECTIONS OF SPEECHES presented at conferences were issued.

OTHER
The OPEN DOOR DAY celebrating the World Intellectual Property Day was held on April 25, 2003 in IPO SR premises.

IX. Other relevant matters