Annual Technical Report 2004 on Trademark Information Activities submitted by Poland (SCIT/ATR/TM/2004/PL)
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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 2004 the regulations of the “Industrial Property” Act (enacted on August 22, 2001, amended in Official Journal 2003 No 119, item 1117 and Official Journal 2004 No 33, item 286) were observed in the field of industrial property protection in Poland.
Trends or areas experiencing rapid changes with respect to the previous year
In 2004, 26.828 decisions were taken with respect to trademark registration: under the domestic procedure -17.132 and with respect to international registration- 9.696. The overall amount of decisions taken was an increase of 10,9% compared to 2003.
In 2004 the PPO received 23.074 trademark applications and notifications of international registrations of trademarks designating Poland, including 14.934 applications under the national procedure and 8.140 foreign applications filed under the international procedure, i.e. under the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks and the Protocol relating to that Agreement. The number of registered trademarks valid on December 31st 2004 amounted to 179.431, from among which:
-86.148 registered under the national procedure
- 93.283 registered under the international procedure
II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, and distribution of secondary sources of trademark information, i.e., trademark gazettes
Publishing, printing, copying techniques
Information on filed trademark applications is published in the “Patent Office’s Bulletin”, which is issued every two weeks both on paper and on our web page. Information on application filed is published after the 3 month time lapse since the date of application.
The PPO has its own publication system, which enables production of the Office’s publications on its own. The publishing process was based on the DTP system and covered preparation of the data contained in the Office’s database or text editing and text typesetting in InDesign 3.0. Laser prints constitute the basis for the montage preceding the printing process. Printing was performed on the offset machine and digital reproducer. Publications were book bound in the last phase.
Information on registered trademarks is published monthly in the “Announcements of the PPO”. Information on trademark applications is published in the „Bulletin of the PPO”.
Main types of announcements of the Office in the field of trademark information
The following announcements are published relating to individual trade marks in the “Patent Office’s Bulletin” and “Announcements of the PPO”:
• Trade marks granted
• Trade marks amended after publication
• Trade mark registrations revoked
• Trade marks expired
• International registration acknowledged in Poland
• Rectification
• International registration of a trade mark designating Poland (prior to examination)
• Trade marks under the national procedure
Mass storage media and microforms used
Trademark information is stored on a paper carrier and in machine-readable form (discs, CD-ROM and DVD). In 2004 the information was made accessible to:
1 Outside users:
- On the premises of the Polish Patent Office in the Office’s Library, in the form of official bulletins on paper
- In the PPO, for retrieval on the databases contained on CD-ROM (TRACES, DEMAS, CASSIS TRADEMARK PENDING, CASSIS TRADEMARK ASSIGN, CASSIS TRADEMARK REGISTERED, COMMUNITY TRADEMARKS BULLETIN, TRADEMARKS OF RUSSIA, OMPI)
- Via the Internet, 8 workstations installed in the Office’s Library to perform retrieval in the PPO database containing the complete verbal and graphic data on all trademarks filed and protected in Poland as well as information service on trademarks designating Poland prepared on the basis of the data received from the WIPO. National applications are available in the data base three months after the date of filing.
- From a user’s computer or the Internet)
2 to the Polish Patent Office’s examiners:
- in- house database ROMARIN accessible in the network form examiners’ workstations.
III. Matters concerning classifying, reclassifying and indexing of trademark information
The PPO uses the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (Nice Classification) 8th Edition. Applicants should classify goods and services properly.
For figurative marks the PPO uses the Vienna Classification system.
During the granting procedure good and service classes can be amended by office staff. Reclassification during the application stage is performed by the Office; in the trademarks registered reclassification takes place upon the request of the person entitled.
No electronic classification systems are used to check the classification symbols provided by the applicant.
Application documents of national trademarks are scanned and indexed: Server AIX, application- IBM Content Manager
IV. Trademark manual search file establishment and upkeep
No manual search files are kept
File Building
Information on trademarks is kept and made available to search in a paper form and on CD-ROMs. The collection is updated on regular basis.
V. Activities in the field of computerized trademark search systems
In 2004 the Polish Patent Office used the existing computerized trademark database for the internal purposes in the field of filing, examination and registration of trademarks. The base includes the following databases in the network system:
In-house systems (online/offline)
• MARPOL- bibliographic and graphic database containing trademark applications and registrations as well as negative decisions under the national procedure, updated daily. The database is consulted by our Office’s examiners in trademark search.
• ROMARIN – database of registered international trademarks
• INN – database of active substances of pharmaceutical products
• 6 ter – database created according to the Paris Convention
• MARMAD – search system for trademarks applied under the Madrid Agreement
• UPNOTIF – administration service system for trademarks applied under the Madrid Agreement
• CTM Search Reports – administration services for purposes of searching CTMs
Data is stored in the XML format. The access is carried out via a browser. Search and search reports for OHIM were carried out for 14.018 community trademark applications
External databases
• Modernization of the Office’s Internet home page (administration of services for outside users of the Office’s information sources) – extended to data retrieval from the CTM DOWNLOAD
• Databases on subjects of industrial property filed and under protection in Poland
Administrative management systems (e.g., register, legal status, statistics, administrative support, etc.)
Functioning within support systems (including administrative service), operating off-line:
a. law information system
b. patent attorneys information system
c. finance-accounting system
Equipment used (hardware, including the types of terminal and network used, and software), carriers used
1. In-house computer network (LAN) based on the Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet solutions. Alcatel and 3com active tools
2 Hardware installed in 2004:
Replacement of 115 old workstations, including:
• 15 computers with the following configurations- PIV 3,05 GHz, 120 GB HDD, 1024 Mb RAM, screen CRT 21’
• 35 computers with the following Celeron parameters- 2,4 GHz, 80 GB HDD, 512 Mb RAM, screen LCD 17’
• 65 computers with the following Celeron parameters – 1,7 GHz, 80 GB HDD, 128 Mb RAM, screen LCD 15’
3 New servers were bought and the existing ones were modernized
4 Implementation of:
• Active Directory domain on the Windows 2003 Server
• New e-mail system of the PPO, based on the MS Exchange 2003 Server
• Database based on MS SQL server
• Tivolli system of central data backup
5 The following programs were installed:
Operating systems:
• Windows 2003 Server
• Windows 2000 Server
• Windows NT 4 Server
• IBM AIX v 4.3
Database servers:
• IBM DB2 and Content Manager
• MS SQL 2000
• Oracle 9i
• MySQL v 4.0.15
Basic functions of the servers:
• E-mail and group work servers working on MS Exchange 2003
• Domain controller on Windows 2003 with DHCP, DNS
• Routing and firewall on MS ISA Server and CISCO PIX
• web page on the Microsoft Content Management Server
• Tivoli Storage Manager system of data backup 5.2
• Sophos Antyvirus with E-mail scanner
6. The working applications were supported on the basis of the following tools:
• DB2 and JAVA- managing trademark and industrial design database
• Pearl, PHP, C#. NET – creating of inter- and intra- websites
• IBM CONTENT MANAGER- managing the application documents of trademarks and industrial designs
• SQL SERVER and C#- managing the external database
• ULTRANET and IRIS- supporting the net access to optical discs
• Adobe and Corel software – publishing issues
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)
1. In 2004 the following publications containing trademark information were accessible in the Office’s Library on paper and in the Internet:
• The biweekly “”Patent Office’s Bulletin”
• The “Announcements of the PPO”
2. The PPO database was rendered accessible for the outside users from 8 workstations installed in the Office’s library to perform retrieval. The data stored in the base is updated biweekly.
3. Trademark information services for users were performed by the Information unit of the Office and in the library where customers may obtain help within the retrieval and searching procedures.
4. Excerpts, duplicates and certificates officially confirming the specified entries in the trademark register were delivered under payment upon users’ request.
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 2004 the PPO received official bulletins containing among the others data on trademarks from 25 countries
The PPO received 44 numbers (228 booklets) of Gazette OMPI des Marques Internationales free of charge
.In 2004 exchange of trademark documentation and information with foreign patent offices was continued. We sent to libraries abroad:
To 39 countries, 457 copies of “WUP””- Announcements of the Patent Office
To 17 countries, 443 copies of “BUP” –Patent Office’s Bulletin
Exchange of machine-readable information
The PPO received trademark data on CD-ROMs from the USA (26 discs), Germany (7 discs), OHIM (52 discs) and the WIPO (20 discs)
3 sets of TRACES database were sold within the country
VIII. Matters concerning education and training including technical assistance to developing countries
Promotional activities (seminars, exhibitions, visits, advertising, etc.)
• All-Poland Conference –“ Protection of trademarks, industrial designs and geographical indications in Poland after the accession to the EU”
• Promotional stand at the PATLIB 2004 Conference in Portugal
• Promotional stand at the Science Picnic of BIS Polish Radio
• All-Poland Conference in the co-operation with TAIEX –“Intellectual Property in Developing Society”
• Informational stand during the 4th National Educational Forum for small and medium-sized enterprises organized by Polish Agency for Enterprise Development
• Seminar for patent attorneys from universities and academies in Cedzyna
• Inteltrans 2004 Conference –“Quality, Innovation and Technology Transfer in Enterprises’ Development”, in co-organization with Cracow University of Technology
• Informational/promotional stand at Katowice Fairs for Economic and Science Innovations Intarg 2004
• Informational stand at International EPIDOS 2004 Conference organized by the EPO in Prague
• All-Poland Conference- “Protection of trademarks and industrial designs in the EU”
• The 9th All-Poland Science Conference –“Patent Information for Science and Industry”
• Awards Ceremony of winners of the 2nd edition of Competitions organized by the Patent Office for the best poster, doctoral and master’s thesis and student dissertation on the industrial property protection issues.
Training courses for national and foreign participants
• 106 of the Office’s staff members participated in training courses organized throughout the country. The courses focused on various issues such as civil service, introduction to legislation and administration systems, the European Union etc.
• 15 lectures on the industrial property issues led by the Office’s staff, participated by 535 people
• Members of the PPO’s staff participated in conferences, meetings and training courses organized in other countries by the international organizations such as OHIM. The courses focused on various issues including trade marks:
• “Protection of trademarks, industrial designs and geographical indications in Poland after the accession to the EU”
• Seminar for staff of patent information centers (the PPO and OHIM)
• Seminar on protection of trade marks and industrial designs in the EU (the PPO, OHIM)
IX. Other relevant matters