Annual Technical Report 2005 on Trademark Information Activities submitted by Slovakia (SCIT/ATR/TM/2005/SK)
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I. Evolution of registration activities
Changes experienced in terms of application filings and registrations with respect to the previous year
In 2005 when compared with the year 2004, the number of trademarks applications from Slovak applicants decreased by 5,9 % to 2.739, the total number of national applications was 3.885, 4,3 % less than in 2004.
In 2005, in the international procedure under the Madrid Agreement and Protocol to the Madrid Agreement 5.128 applications for trademarks were filed, representing a decrease by 14,6 % as compared in 2004.
The total number of registered trademarks increased by 28.2 % to 4.296. The number of domestic registered trademarks was higher by 46 % (2.872), the number of trademarks registered for foreign applicants decreased by 3 % to 1.424.
On December 31, 2005, there were 43.499 valid trademarks registered in the Office register and the 109.000 international trademarks in the Slovak Republic.
In comparison with the statistics of the years 1999 - 2005, there are following results in trademark area:
II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, and distribution of secondary sources of trademark information, i.e., trademark gazettes
Publishing, printing, copying techniques
Publication of trademarks
The Office publishes published trademarks applications and published registered/ renewed trademarks in the Official Gazette.
Trademark 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 2005 the Gazette had a circulation of 250 copies, of which 111 were distributed monthly by subscription. Other copies were sent free of charge to patent information centres and contact and information points of the IPO, to information and consulting sites INNOINFO, 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 Official Gazette “Vestník ÚPV SR” has been distributed within the frame of mutual exchange to 30 countries including organizations EPO and WIPO last year.
The following numbers of trademarks were published in the Official Gazette in 2005:
4.528 published trademarks applications
4.058 registered trademarks
1.782 renewed trademarks
Main types of announcements of the Office in the field of trademark information
The Official Gazette contains trademark announcements arranged in following main chapters:
- list of published trademark applications (numerical series)
- bibliographic data of published trademark applications including the list of goods and services (arranged according to the application numbers)
- list of published trademark applications converted from the Community trademark applications (numerical series)
- bibliographic data of published trademark applications converted from the Community trademark applications including the list of goods and services (arranged according to the application numbers)
- list of registered trademarks without change in comparison to applied sign (numerical series of applications with the number of registration )
- bibliographic data of registered trademarks without change in comparison to applied sign (arranged according to the registration numbers)
- list of registered trademarks with change in comparison to applied sign (numerical series of applications with the number of registration )
- bibliographic data of registered trademarks with change in comparison to applied sign (arranged according to the registration numbers)
- list of registered trademarks based on the trademark applications converted from the Community trademarks (numerical series of applications with the number of registration )
- bibliographic data of registered trademarks based on the trademark applications converted from the Community trademarks (arranged according to the registration numbers)
- list of renewed registrations of trademark (numerical series of applications with the number of registration )
- bibliographic data of renewed registrations of trademark (arranged according to the registration numbers)
- international registrations of trademarks
- bibliographic data of registered trademarks replaced by an international registration according to the article 4 bis of the Madrid Agreement and article 4 bis of the Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks (arranged according to the international registration numbers)
- official decisions (refusal, etc.)
- lapse of trademark rights
- cancellation of the trademark registration
- partial cancellation of the trademark registration
- assignments of rights and other changes of owners
- partial assignments
- right of lien
- registration of licensing contracts in respect of trademarks
- termination of licensing contracts
- registration of sublicensing contracts in respect of trademarks
- termination of sublicensing contracts
- change of data concerning trademark owners
- change in the list of goods and services
- change of wording or reproductions of trademark
- corrections of names, addresses, dates and mistakes
Word processing and office automation
Word processing and office automation is ensured by application over the trademark database.
Techniques used for the generation of trademark information (printing, recording, photocomposing, etc.)
MS Office 97, QuarkXpress 5.0 for Windows and Corel Draw 10, Photoshop 6.0, FineReader 7.0, 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 image inputs processing for the Gazette and first pages of the trademark documents.
III. Matters concerning classifying, reclassifying and indexing of trademark information
Classification and reclassification activities; Classification systems used, e.g., International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (Nice Classification), International Classification of the Figurative Elements of Marks (Vienna Classification), other classification (please indicate whether goods and services for the registration of marks and whether the figurative elements of marks are classified by your Office and, if so, which classification(s) is (are) used)
Goods and services are classified in accordance with the actual version of the
International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (Nice Classification). In the IPO SR exist an obligatory classifying system of goods and services by applicant according the said Classification. The last version of the International Classification of the Figurative Elements of Marks (Vienna Classification) is used as the code system of figurative elements of trademarks, which are classified by Office's expert.
Use of electronic classification systems to check the classification symbols furnished by an applicant and which are contained in the lists of goods and/or services
Classification symbols were checked by internal electronic classification system built in Office registry software.
Obligation for applicants to use pre-defined terms of the classification applied
In accordance with the Act No.55/1997 amended by the Act No.577/2001 the applicant is obliged to indicate in the application the goods and services for which the trademark is filed, according to the International Classification (Nice Classification) accompanied with the appropriate number of this Classification. But there is no obligation for applicants to use pre-defined terms of the classification.
Bibliographic data and processing for search purposes
The WIPO Standard ST.60 is used for trademark 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 daily in the Internet.
IV. Trademark manual search file establishment and upkeep
File Building
Since the computerized search system for trademark information has been launched the trademark manual search files building and updating has been ceased.
Documentation from other offices maintained and/or considered part of the available search file
In 2005, within the frame of mutual exchange, the IPO SR received trademark gazettes from the following states and organizations: AT, BA, BG, BR, CH, CZ, DE, EE, FR, HR, HU, IT KG, LT, LV, MD, MK, PL, PT, RO, RU, SI, SM, UA, US, OHIM and WIPO.
V. Activities in the field of computerized trademark search systems
In-house systems (online/offline)
The online trademark database kept by the Industrial Property Office serves for national trademarks searches and also for trademark procedure. Select registry data are available to the public in the Internet.
It is possible to carry out searches according to bibliographic data in all the databases used for the trademarks.
International trademarks searches were performed in the Internet and in the Office management system “INVENTIO” for administration of international trademarks with designation for SK.
The searches on subjects of the Community trademark applications were performed in databases containing national trademarks and international trademarks with respect to Slovak Republic. The Office purchased a French searching system called Acsepto from SWORD company which allows to perform a verbal, figurative or combined searching within all designations submitted for registration or already registered as trademarks on the territory of the Slovak Republic.
List of search CD-ROMs and databases used on local network through the UltraNet 2000system:
EUROM - Community trade mark
TRACES
NIVILO classifications
WIPO Official Gazette on CD-ROM
CD-ROM CASSIS containing registered and pending trademarks in US
IPLEX CD-ROM – full legislative texts (national original laws, multilateral and bilateral treaties)
translating dictionaries
External databases
Internet databases in particular:
ROMARIN
Madrid Express Database
OHIM – Community Trademarks Database
Administrative management systems (e.g., register, legal status, statistics, administrative support, etc.)
The Office automation management system contains national and international trademarks registry (data since 1990 - national trademarks and data since 1947 - international trademarks) using “INVENTIO” software.
Administrative databases 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 Presentation Server 4.0, SAN HP MSA 1500 CS.
VI. Administration of trademark services available to the public (relating to facilities, e.g., for lodging applications, registering trademarks, assisting clients with search procedures, obtaining official publications and registry extracts)
Planning, administration, automation, security
In 2005, the Office’s reading room has been visited by 1.734 users and 1.245 of it were from the public. In total there were provided 6.896 borrowings of patent and other literature made available to the public and 21.730 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 2005 there were performed 211 patent searches, 2.693 trademark searches and 35 design searches based on 981 written and 142 personally requests.
The Office’s reading room including the search workstation opens daily from 8:00 to 15:00 except the Wednesday (9:00-16:00).
All online services and other basic information are available via Internet address of IPO SR: www.upv.sk.
Information services available to the public (including computerized services and search files contained in libraries remote from your Office and trademark information posted by your Office on the World Wide Web)
The Office library provides following services to the public:
- general information provided by Office's experts
- lending service (Official Gazettes, special monographs and reference literature) in the reading room
- interlibrary lending service
- international interlibrary lending service
- sale of special monographs and periodical publications (“Intellectual Property”, Official Gazette “Vestník ÚPV SR” in paper) upon request or on the place
- reprographic services upon request or on the place
- on-line searches in Office’s search system, self-service during a personal visit
- searches in International Trademarks Database ROMARIN
- searches upon request - orders in written and on-line form
- registry information provided in the reading room
- CD-ROM workstations available in the reading room
At present, traditional methods of searching trademarks (card catalogue) are not used.
Trademark information on the World Wide Web:
- general information
- information about Office activities (seminars, training courses, etc.)
- application guide and forms
- administrative fees
- relevant laws
- Annual Reports
- selected registry data
- Official Gazette
- order forms (searches, Official Gazette, special literature)
- Nice Classification (8-th edition)
- Vienna Classification (5-th edition)
Patent Information Centres and Contact and Information Points
The four IPO SR patent information centres and six contact and information points of the IPO SR established in 2003 are located in state, regional and district libraries as well as in the Slovak National Library in Martin and Centre of Scientific and Technical Information in Bratislava. A list of centres and points is available on the Office’s web site
http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=10&idd2=
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.
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 recourses 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 databases via Internet etc.
The Office had organised the three specialized seminars during last year held in the Slovak National Library in Martin and in the Juraj Fándly Library in Trnava, in May and in the State Scientific Library in Košice, in June.
Within the multilateral co-operation programme with EPO the representative of the Centre of Scientific and Technical Information participated on the PATLIB 2005 Conference in Sinaia in Romania. Together with the Office representative the Slovak delegates were thus given the possibility of gaining new knowledge and experience concerning the co-operation of patent offices with regional patent information centres and to get familiar with activities of similar patent information centres established in other European countries.
Information and consulting sites for innovations
Last year the Office managed to provide for the compliance with the requirement of assisting the small and medium sized enterprises, or the technical universities with their innovation related activities, on a systematic basis and spread the information on industrial property protection within the target group. Namely the small and medium sized enterprises are the main bearers of development in Slovakia and at the same time pose a great challenge, when it comes for legal protection of new technical solutions. The Office in favour of small and medium enterprises in 2005 established the first four information and consulting sites for innovations – „INNOINFO“ and another six were established during the last year – The Slovak Chamber of Commerce and Industry – Regional Office in Bratislava, The Malacky “Incubator”, The Regional Advisory and Information Centre (RPIC) in Komárno, RPIC Poprad, RPIC Prešov and BIC Spišská Nová Ves, s. r. o., Business & Innovation Centre.
Workplace of the IPO SR in Bratislava
Workplace of the Office, which was opened in 2004 in the building of the Ministry of Finance in Bratislava offered especially services concerning the searches in the fields of trademarks, designs and patents in the last year. In the workplace, there is a filing room and room for discussions and negotiations .
VII. Matters concerning mutual exchange of trademark documentation and information
International or regional cooperation in the exchange of trademark information, e.g., in the form of official gazettes
In 2005 followed the mutual exchange of trademark information in the form of official gazettes between the IPO SR and other offices also international organizations, including the OHIM and the WIPO.
Exchange of machine-readable information
In 2002 the IPO SR stopped the participation in the joint ESPACE TRACES CD-ROM project (Trademarks of BG, CZ, HU, PL, RO and SK).
VIII. Matters concerning education and training including technical assistance to developing countries
Training courses for national participants
THE COURSE “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY”
In September a new year of the Intellectual Property course began. The Office’s Institute for Education was established in year 2000, when the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic granted the accreditation to the IPO SR for a period of five years. In January 2005 the Office has obtained a new five-year period accreditation. The lecturers are university teachers, experts from practice and the IPO SR experts. An overall number of training lessons extends to 342 hours, out of which 227 hours are lectures and the remaining training hours are devoted to hands-on practical exercising and training.
The Intellectual Property course consists of four separate parts: module A – Intellectual Property and Copyright Law Essentials; module B – Creativity - Management of Creativity, Marketing and Economics; module C – Information in the field of Industrial Property Protection; module D – Industrial Property Law. In 2005 continued in course 25 participants, out of which 18 employees of IPO SR.
Last year the Office also released a CD-ROM with final theses of the Intellectual Property course attendants during the period from year 2000 to year 2005.
Supporting activities:
CONFERENCE
Almost 70 participants took part in the fifth year of the Conference “Intellectual Property in Slovakia V” held on the occasion of the World Intellectual Property Day, the main topic of which were innovations. On this occasion, an open door day of the IPO was held on April 27, during which the Office opened its non-public premises to people. Excursion was connected with presentation of the Office and provision of information and consultancy services.
LECTURES AND SEMINARS
In June 2005 the IPO SR in co-operation with Office for Technical Assistance and Information Exchange of the European Commission (TAIEX) and the World Intellectual Property Organisation organised an international seminar on the Enforcement of intellectual property rights in a modern society. The seminar was predominantly for judges, customs and police officers. For research workers in the area of biotechnology the Office prepared a seminar on legal protection of biotechnological inventions dedicated for scientists in the European Union.
At the end of the year the Office organised a seminar on Support of Intellectual Property. Guests from Poland made presentation on patent information centres, contact and information sites and information and advisory centres of the Office for innovations – „INNOINFO", on project IPR Helpdesk. This project has been addressed within the 5th and 6th framing programme of the European Union, the objective of which is enhance the public awareness on intellectual property related rights and inform the small and medium sized enterprises on possibilities offered by protection with regards to new technical solutions as well as in connection with their subsequent use.
In pursuance of specific requirements the Office provided for a variety of specialisation oriented groups the lectures, presentations and educational courses related to industrial property rights protection.
JOURNAL
Awareness of the public in the field of intellectual property is increased also by the professional magazine INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY magazine (“Duševné vlastníctvo”) issued quarterly by the Office.
Magazine went through a significant change last year. Both, the graphic layout and quality of articles have improved. The magazine offers a wide range of thematically oriented topic. On the occasion of World Intellectual Property Day the IPO SR offered to readers “The Intellectual Property Extra” a sixteen-page full-colour monothematic bulletin. edition No. 3/2005 included a twelve-page integral part was devoted to UmInEx Exhibition 2005 and to “Ján Bahýľ Prize”.
12 editions of the E-zine IPO SR e-mail magazine were released last year. The magazine in electronic form released regularly each month consists of permanent sections with information from the IPO SR, the world, monitoring of periodicals, selected information from the separate editions of the Intellectual Property Magazine and not missing was also the knowledge contest in the area of science and technology, receiving much acclaimed by E-zine readers.
EXHIBITIONS
The IPO SR is continuously enhancing the public awareness on industrial property protection also by means of presentations of fairs and exhibitions. Besides organising the national exhibition UmInEx in Banská Bystrica, on 25th International Building Fair CONECO in Bratislava, at the 35th International Chemistry Fair INCHEBA in Bratislava, at the 11th International Mechanical Engineering Fair in Nitra, and the 15th Annual Conference on Patent Information EPIC 2005 in Budapest as well as at the Exhibition of Innovations IENA 2005 in Nuremberg within a joint stand of the European Patent Offices: „Internationales Patent-Informationszentrum“.
The Conference in Budapest was oriented on the exchange of new knowledge and experience acquired by specialists from patent offices, commercial providers of patent information services and patent information users.
UmInEx 2005 Exhibition
From September 20 to 22, 2005 the Office organised already the fourth year of UmInEx, the national exhibition of inventions and technical news. Within the three days nearly 40 exhibitors had presented their exhibits in the form of drawings, prototypes, technologies models and final products. Quite a few visitors managed to contact the prospective manufacturers and sellers of their new products, which is one of the exhibition main objectives.
PUBLICATIONS
Last year the Office released six publications. Besides the Intellectual Property in Slovakia Conference workshop V included the second amended and updated edition of the publication Intellectual Property – the development tool for small and medium sized enterprises, the second volume of Collection of Selected Decisions by IPO SR (Volume I has been released in year 2003), International Application Form according to PCT (instructions for applicants), UmInEx Exhibitors Catalogue and the five-volume edition of the International Patent Classification.
The information materials focused on a general mission of the Office and the industrial became the subject to specific target groups. The two types of brochures released in the attractive cartoon-like form: Patents and Trademarks were made available to students. The two information brochures entitled: “Making a Mark” and “Looking Good” were intended to small and medium sized enterprises, introduced the issue of trademarks and designs.
OTHER
The year 2005 Ján Bahýľ Prize
The name of the Slovak designer and inventor of helicopter has been given to the prize being granted for extraordinary valuable technical solution in Slovakia. Based on recommendations by an evaluating committee comprised of eleven members the IPO SR the President of the IPO SR grants the Ján Bahýľ Prize in two-year intervals, including a financial premium of 100,000 SKK. It is also in this way the Office wishes to encourage the development of technical creativity and protection of industrial property related activities in Slovakia.
The Ján Bahýľ Prize was acquired by - Duslo, a. s., Šaľa, as the owner of patent SK 283 209 – 4-aminodifenylamine preparation method and the five originators of invention.
Relations with mass media
In the framework of newly launched cooperation with media, IPO SR provided series of radio broadcasted advisory sessions in Slovak Radio, TV reports and spots in TV Markiza and Slovak Television STV as well as popularization of IP field and IPO SR activities in print media.
IX. Other relevant matters