IP Conferences Updated
The following additions have been made to the IP Menu Conferences Calendar
| IP Menu Website |
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Thursday, January 12, 2006
United Kingdom - Questel-Orbit Releases GB Full Text Patent Database
Questel-Orbit has announced the release of the British full text patents database (GBFULL). The file covers A documents from 1979 and includes bibliographic data from Questel-Orbit and full text from Univentio. GBFULL will be available on QPAT on 18 January 2006
To find out more visit Questel-Orbit.
| Questel-Orbit Website |
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
USA - New USPTO Proposals to Improve Patent Examination
T
he USPTO has announced proposed measure to "improve patent examination". It will be interesting to hear how industry and patent attorneys react to these new proposals. Details of the USPTO announcement are reproduced below.
The Department of Commerce’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), in its continuing efforts to make the patent examination process more effective and efficient, is proposing changes that would reduce the amount of rework by the USPTO and reduce the time it takes to issue a patent and the patent review process. Specifically, these initiatives will prioritize the claims reviewed during the examination process and better focus the agency’s examination of patent applications by requiring applicants to identify the most important claims to the invention.
The recognized value of patents to innovation has led to enormous increases in the number of patent applications filed each year. Since the USPTO's resources have not increased at the same rate as filings, it has become much more difficult to provide reliable, consistent and prompt patentability decisions. Delay in granting a patent can slow new products coming to market, and issuing patents for inventions that are not novel and non-obvious can impede competition and economic growth. Simply hiring more patent examiners will not slow the growth in the time it takes to get a patent or improve the quality of examination. This will occur only through the participation of applicants in facilitating more effective and efficient patent examination.
“Improving the patent process will take everyone working together—applicants and the USPTO,” noted Jon Dudas, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “Better quality applications mean better examination. We need more focus throughout and closure to the examination process.”
In FY 2004, almost one-third of the 355,000 new patent applications were directed to inventions that had already been reviewed by the USPTO, but applicants resubmitted them mostly with only limited changes to the claims or, sometimes with the same claims that the USPTO had previously rejected. While some resubmissions are necessary, addressing them detracts from the agency’s ability to examine new patent applications. Also, over 40% of new applications in FY 2004 had more than 20 claims. Although the initial examination of large numbers of claims may sometimes be necessary in certain complex applications, when these must be filed, applicants should be prepared to assist the agency in ensuring these applications don’t absorb a disproportionate amount of the limited time the USPTO has to review applications.
In the past two years the USPTO has instituted a number of measures to improve patent quality and also has implemented new metrics to measure the results. Results indicate that quality is improving. The percentage of patent examiners certified for promotion to full performance level increased from 59% in FY 2004 to 70% in FY 2005. The number of office actions complying with applicable laws and rules during examination improved to 86.2% from 82% the previous year. The compliance rate for final allowances improved from 94.8% to 96% from FY 2004 to FY 2005.
The new rules can be found here and here.
| USPTO Website |
China - Useful Chinese-English Translations
The European Patent Office (EPO) has produced a brief table of useful Chinese-English Patent terms. To find out more visit here.
| EPO Website |
Conference Pages Updated
10 February 2006 - 2nd International Conference: Intellectual Property Protection for Plant Innovation - Frankfurth, DE (FORUM Institute)
14 - 15 February 2006 - Patent Litigation 2006 - Munich, DE (FORUM Institute)
22 - 23 June 2006 - Patent Litigation 2006 - Paris, FR (FORUM Institute)
21 - 22 August 2006 - Global Forum on Intellectual Property 2006 - Singapore (IP Academy Singapore)
IP Menu Conferences
Friday, December 30, 2005
Canada - New Designs Search System
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has announced a new Canadian Industrial Designs Database. This means that Canadian industrial designs are now searchable via the internet. CIPO advised that the "initial phase includes approximately 10 000 designs registered as of June 15, 2002. New registrations will be added on a weekly basis. CIPO is currently in the process of completing the electronic back capture of the designs registered prior to this date and they will be added in Spring 2006".
| CIPO Website |
Wednesday, December 28, 2005
USA - Korea - International Search Agreement
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) have announced an agreement in which KIPO will act as an available international searching and examining authority for international applications filed with the USPTO under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The agreement will allow applicants additional flexibility to choose a given international authority based on the technology disclosed in the international application, speed of services provided and cost of obtaining searches and examination of international applications. The agreement goes into effect January 1, 2006. To find out more, visit the USPTO website here.
| USPTO Website |
Ireland - Patent Office Website Redesigned
The Irish Patent Office has done a website revamp. The site has been re-designed with a view to improving navigation and accessibility. The Office advises "for the moment, some interactive pages such as those providing searches of the registers and databases will continue to retain the old appearance for entering search criteria and displaying results. The new page design will be applied to these pages over the next few weeks". To find out more visit the Irish Patents Office website here.
| IPO Website |
Friday, December 16, 2005
Delphion - New File History Order Service
Delphion has announced the inclusion of file history ordering on its website. Now when searching you can select the "file history" link to immediately order the file history. You can have it charged directly to your Delphion account, or if you are like us and also have a MicroPatent account, you can elect to charge it there.
Pricing appears to be identical to MicroPatent. To find out more, visit Delphion.
| Delphion Website |
Monday, December 12, 2005
Australia - ACIP Release Crown Use Report
The Advisory Council on Intellectual Property (ACIP) released a discussion paper in December 2003 and received a number of written submissions. Submissions were considered and consultations were held with interested parties in Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane. The Federal Industry Parliamentary Secretary, Warren Entsch MP, released the report on 7 December 2005, Review of Crown Use Provisions for Patents and Designs by the Advisory Council on Intellectual Property (ACIP).
The report and media release are now available.
| ACIP Website |
Derwent World Patents Index Update
Thomson Scientific have just announced that the "enhanced version" of the Derwent World Patents Index will be released on the Dialog, STN International and Questel•Orbit online services in the 1st quarter of 2006.
"The enhancements are designed to ensure the database meets the requirements of the International Patent Classification (IPC), Version 8, which enters into force on January 1, 2006. All DWPI records affected by this reclassification will be updated and identified on an ongoing basis, enabling users to easily distinguish between original and re-classified IPC data.
The enhancements will also provide patent searchers with new information to make their searches even more effective, including:
• 750,000 documentation abstracts available for the first time in a text-searchable format.
• New family member sub-sections including data such as original patent titles and abstracts, plus extra bibliographic data such as full names of inventors and associated addresses, patent assignee addresses and patent agent information.
Our implementation of the IPC reform within DWPI is intended to provide maximum benefit through allowing flexible use of IPC for search,” said Brian Tyler, executive vice president of corporate markets, Thomson Scientific, “and we are pleased to take the opportunity of the reload to deliver additional enhancements to searchers of Derwent World Patents Index.”
More information is available here.
| Thomson-Scientific Website |
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Questel-Orbit - Version 4 of QPAT Released
The latest version of QPAT (www.qpat.com) has now been released. Version 4 of QPAT is enhanced and includes a significantly redesign.
"The new QPAT design enhances user-friendliness and navigation while providing additional searching power and features, as well as displays and exports. The patent search screen has been redesigned to meet the needs of both end-user and expert searchers, and includes user-friendly entry boxes as well as a command-line entry. Also new to QPAT v4 is the addition of an assignee and inventor index look-up.
The hit list has been enhanced to include a tabular display which can be expanded to include abstracts and front-page images, allowing it to be an excellent format to quickly scan search results. The record displays have been designed allowing you to quickly change the record view (format) as well as incorporating quick links to the corresponding full text, legal status, and both FamPat and extended (Inpadoc) families. Electronic facsimile patents (PDFs) from our extensive collection can be easily and quickly displayed from any of the record views.
We have also included a highlighting feature, similar to that in PatentExaminer, which allows you to color-code selected words so you can quickly see how they appear in the full-text records.
Record exports have been redesigned allowing you to export either from the many record views or from the hitlist. The exports include a number of useful record formats and can be delivered in PDF, RTF, XLS, TXT, or XML".
| QPAT Website | Questel-Orbit Website |
New Zealand - IPONZ November 2005 Newsletter
The Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand has just published the November 2005 edition of their Newsletter (Business Update). In this edition:
| IPONZ Website |
Thursday, December 01, 2005
WIPO - WIPO Magazine November/December Issue No. 06 / 2005
The WIPO Magazine Issue No. 06/2005 (November/December) is now available from WIPO.
Included in this issue:
| WIPO Website |
USA - Patent & Trademark Application Statistics
T
he USPTO has produced application figures for patents and trademarks for the 2005 fiscal year.The USPTO received a record number of patent and trademark applications, receiving 406,302 patent applications and 323,501 applications for trademark registration. The USPTO granted 165,485 patents, including 151,079 utility (inventions), 13,395 design, and 816 plant patents. Since 1790, over seven million U.S. patents have been granted.
U.S. resident inventors received 85,238 U.S. patents in fiscal year 2005. California resident inventors received the highest share (23 percent, 19,928 patents) of these patents, followed by inventors from New York (7 percent, 5,631 patents), Texas (7 percent, 5,660 patents), Michigan (5 percent, 3,907 patents), and Massachusetts (4 percent, 3,443 patents).
The USPTO registered 143,396 trademarks and renewed 32,279 registrations in fiscal year 2005. Over 3 million trademarks have been registered since the first in 1870. At the end of fiscal year 2005, there were 1,255,570 active trademark registrations.
To find out more about this report, click here.
| USPTO Website |
New Zealand - New Online Correspondence Services
IPONZ has recently announced that they have expanded their online correspondence service to allow clients to submit all their correspondence for Trade Marks, Patents and Designs online. The new services also include the ability to submit payments for correspondence that may attract a fee, for example, "Requests for certificates of commissioner".
To find our more information from IPONZ, click here.
| IPONZ Website |
Hong Kong - New Interactive IP Services
The Hong Kong Intellectual Property Department (IPD) has just launched an series of interactive electronic services for renewal of registered trademarks and patents. The new service, which enables users to complete transactions securely in real time like e-banking services, is available 24 hours per day, seven days a week. The IPD plan to extend the interactive services to include agent’s address and address for service in January, 2006.
“The new system cuts out double-handling of data, so it reduces the chance of errors. Ultimately, less staff intervention will be needed in the process, so patent and trademark examiners can concentrate on other areas of work.”
| HKIPD Website |
Austria - Legal Status Update on INPAODOC
INPADOC has recently announced the resumption of Austrian PCT data which had been unavailable since 2004. The updates from February 2004 will be loaded into the system in week 49/2005. INPADOC has also announced that AT Utility Model data - entry into the AT national phase will be available for the first time in the INPADOC legal status database from week 49/2005 and will include records from January 2004 onwards.
| EPO Website |
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Australia: Consideration of Patents and Experimental Use - Final Report
On 9 November 2005, the Federal Industry Parliamentary Secretary, Warren Entsch released ACIP's final report into the consideration of Patents and Experimental Use.
"The report examines whether some types of patents are inhibiting research and development in Australia and whether current laws need to be modified........The report found that Australian law is not clear on whether researchers are able to experiment on patented inventions without first obtaining the permission of the patent owner. Although it has been common practice within the industry to allow certain levels of experimentation on patented inventions, business practices are changing and continued uncertainty in this area could hold back the Australian research industry. The report recommends that patent law be changed to make it clear that research done for experimental purposes does not infringe patents, as long as it does not unreasonably conflict with the normal exploitation of a patent. ACIP believes this will allow researchers to continue experimenting in patented fields, but if anyone wants to use a patented invention in the normal way then a license must be obtained from the owner".
To read the full Media Release click here. To read the full Report, click here.
| ACIP Website |
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Dialog - Chronolog Issue 4, 2005
Dialog has published Issue 4, 2005 of the Chronolog and it is now available on their website. In this issue:
- Dialog Expands Materials, Engineering and Environmental Content
- Chronolog Replaced by Electronic Newsletters
- A Century of Engineering Indexed: Inspec® Now back to 1898
- New Files Enabled for Chemical Structure Searching
- Matching Dialog Alerts to Your Needs
- From the Experts: Take Advantage of the Alert Delivery Tracker Tool on DataStarWeb
Read the online Chronolog or Download the PDF version of the print Chronolog.
| Dialog Website |
Japan: 2005 JPO Annual Report Now Available
The Japanese Patent Office has just released the 2005 Annual Report. You can access it here.
| JPO Website |
Friday, November 11, 2005
IP Conferences Updated
13 - 15 February 2006 - Kuwait International GIS Conference and Exhibition - Kuwait (Kuwait University)
25 - 28 April 2006 - Beijing International Pharmaceutical & Chemical Intellectual Property Forum - Beijing, CN (CACS / ACS / CIPS / SIPO)
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Canada: Patent Fee Payment History Available
The Canadian Intellectual Property Office has now added patent fee payment history to the Patent Database.
"To assist you in determining whether a corrective payment needs to be made, relevant fee schedules and fee payment history with respect to specific patent applications or patents are now available through the Canadian Patents Database".
| CIPO Website |
Patent Australia News Updated
Three new Patent Office cases have been added to the Patent Australia website. They are:
To find our more, click here.
| Patent Australia Website |
IP Conferences Updated
05 - 08 January 2006 - IPS-USA-2006 NEW YORK - New York, US (IPSI)
08 - 11 January 2006 - IPS-USA-2006 CALIFORNIA - California, US (IPSI)
10 - 13 February 2006 - IPSI-2006 MARBELLA - Marbella, ES (IPSI)
23 - 26 March 2005 - IPSI-2006 AMALFI - Amalfi, IT (IPSI)
27 - 30 April 2006 - IPSI-2006 France - Carcassone, FR (IPSI)
04 - 07 May 2006 - IPSI-2006 SPAIN - S'Agaro, Costa Brava, ES (IPSI)
30 June 2006 - 03 July 2006 - IPSI-2006 MONTREAL - Montreal, CA (IPSI)
Monday, November 07, 2005
Patents: Delphion / MicroPatent Innovation Insights
A new e-newsletter from Delphion has been released called "Innovation Insights".
"Recent months have seen new product enhancements and some organizational changes at Thomson Scientific. This new e-newsletter, Innovation Insights, gives you the latest Thomson Scientific company and product news relevant to your business. It replaces the Delphion®, MicroPatent, and MDC e-newsletters and offers the same high quality, regular updates on these products plus other key solutions including Derwent World Patent Index®, Web of Knowledge® and Techstreet™".
In this first issue:
To find out more click here.
| Delphion Website | MicroPatent Website |
Patents: US and AU Patent Offices Launch Pilot Project on International Search and Examination Services
As part of a pilot program of USPTO to reduce the backlog of U.S. national patent applications the US and AU are trialing a new program.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and IP Australia, Australia's national patent office, has initiated a pilot project to test the feasibility of IP Australia performing search and examination services for the USPTO on international applications filed with the USPTO under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).
The pilot, launched last week, is part of ongoing USPTO efforts to bring down the growing backlog of U.S. national patent applications waiting to be examined.
Each year, the USPTO receives nearly 50,000 PCT international applications in addition to over 350,000 national applications. The USPTO is testing whether, by having international applications processed elsewhere, it can dedicate more resources to examining the 600,000 national applications currently in the pipeline, with the goal of increasing productivity and enhancing quality.
Under the terms of the pilot project, IP Australia will process 100 PCT applications covering a wide range of technologies. The USPTO will review IP Australia's work to ensure that it meets USPTO standards for quality and accuracy.
| IP Australia Website | USPTO Website |
Thursday, October 27, 2005
Patents: WizPatent Update
You may recall that back in mid-September I introduced a new Patent Search and Download software package called WizPatent. Well things move fast and the guys behind WizPatent have upgraded their software with some new (very useful!) features. The software is still in Beta but quite stable. The new features include
As mentioned earlier, I believe the software will be publicly available soon, however to find out more visit the WizPatent Website here.
| WizPatent Website |
Patents: Unlocking Patent Value: Companies Investing for the Future in Mobile Telecommunications
Thomson Scientific via their "KnowledgeLink" newsletter have published a paper by Matt Brocklehurst entitled "Unlocking Patent Value: Companies Investing for the Future in Mobile Telecommunications".
"Innovation is the key to increasing profitability and retaining market share in the highly competitive world of mobile communications. Only those companies that innovate will withstand the threat of competition from companies with lower cost bases. A new market report from Bristol York, the investment banking and advisory firm. examines patent data from
Thomson Scientific to show how a sophisticated patent strategy can build lasting success and
continued growth".
An introduction to this paper is available from Thomson Scientific here. You can request a free Executive Summary copy of this report here or order the full report from Bristol York. Details available here.
| Thomson Scientific Website |
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Australia: 2005 R&D and Intellectual Property Scoreboard Launched
The Intellectual Property Research of Australia group in conjunction with business analysts IBISWorld, IP Australia and the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research has produced a report called the "Scoreboard". This report outlines the latest available information on the level of R&D and applications for intellectual property (patents, trademarks and designs). The report includes an innovation index, ranking Australia's most innovative firms; R&D expenditure and intensity rankings for parent companies; the level and intensity of intellectual property applications (patents, trademarks and designs) for parent companies; and industry listings (all measures combined).
To find out more click here.
| IP Australia Website | IPRIA Website |
Friday, October 21, 2005
Australia: New Australian Patent Blog
IP Organisers who bring you IP Menu have recently started a new website called the Australian Patent Informtion Centre at www.patentaustralia.com. The aim of this website is to provide information that is focused on two criteria - Patents and Australia.
The site covers recent Patent Office decisions, Federal and High court decisions, legislation changes, courses and seminars relating to patent issues in Australia, information updates on the PATSEARCH database as well as a range of other related matters.
The site can be accessed here and you may also subscribed to the RSS news feed here.
| IP Menu Website | PatentAustralia Website |
Monday, October 17, 2005
Patents: The Trilateral Users Meeting 2005
The Trilateral Users Meeting will be held in Munich, Germany on 17 November 2005. This meeting provides "A unique opportunity to both learn about progress in the co-operation between the EPO, the JPO and the USPTO as seen by the Heads of the three Offices and to better understand the wishes of American, European and Japanese users".
"For the past 23 years, the trilateral co-operation between the EPO, the JPO and the USPTO has resulted in major improvements to the practice of the three offices for the benefit of their users. The annual trilateral meetings are the source of ongoing developments in the infrastructure of the international patent system".
"For the fourth time now, the Trilateral Offices are pleased to welcome their users – patent professionals, patent attorneys and representatives from business and industry – to a Trilateral User Meeting".
"The forthcoming conference offers a unique opportunity to gather first-hand knowledge of trilateral projects and their progress, to learn about the positions of UNICE, JIPA, AIPLA and IPO and to exchange views with Alain Pompidou, President of the European Patent Office, Jon W. Dudas, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO, and Makoto Nakajima, Commissioner of the JPO".
There will also be simultaneous translation into English and Japanese and attendance is free.
| Trilateral Office Website | IP Menu Website |
IP Conferences Updated
IP Menu has updated the IP Conference page with a number of new events. For more information click here.
| IP Menu Website |
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Patents: EPO Global Patent Database Update
The EPO has published a hyperlinked PDF document that provides detailed information on the coverage of the EPO global patent databases.
"The EPO holds one of the largest digital repositories of public knowledge in the world. This vast store is accessed daily by thousands of users and its usage is constantly increasing. The EPO is always in close contact with its users and guards this vast technical asset with great care. In 2004 about 37 Terabytes, the equivalent of 37 million books, were downloaded from the EPO search collection both by internal and external users".
The document can be accessed here. Once you identify a country of interest click on the hyperlink in the PDF document.
| EPO Website | IP Menu Website |
IP Conferences Updated
28 November 2005 - Trademark Protection in China - Frankfurt DE (FORUM Institut)
29 November 2005 - U.S. Trademark Protection - Frankfurt DE (FORUM Institut)
20-21 April 2006 - 7th International Trademark Conference - Geneva CH, WIPO (FORUM Institut)
| IP Conference Website | IP Menu Website |
USA: Two New Deputy Trademark Commissioners Announced
It has been reported on the USPTO website that Jon Dudas, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property has announced trademark's two new deputy commissioners. Deborah S. Cohn was named Deputy Commissioner for Trademark Operations, and Sharon R. Marsh was named Deputy Commissioner for Trademark Examination Policy.
| USPTO Website | IP Menu Website |
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Australia: New Australian Patent Blog
IP Organisers who bring you IP Menu have recently started a new website called the Australian Patent Informtion Centre at www.patentaustralia.com. The aim of this website is to provide information that is focused on two criteria - Patents and Australia.
The site covers recent Patent Office decisions, Federal and High court decisions, legislation changes, courses and seminars relating to patent issues in Australia, information updates on the PATSEARCH database as well as a range of other related matters.
The site can be accessed here and you may also subscribed to the RSS news feed here.
| IP Menu Website | PatentAustralia Website |
Europe: EPIDOS News 3-2005
The latest version of EPIDOS News for 2005 has just been published in English, French and German. In this issue:
| EPO Website | IP Menu Website |
Korea: The Mystery that is Korean Patent Numbers
If you are like me, you often have trouble working out the correct way to input Korean patent numbers into the KIPRIS database. Well, thanks to the folks at the EPO we now have a handy guide called "Input of numbers in the KIPRIS database".
To find out more, click here.
| EPO Website | IP Menu Website |
Australia: IP Enforcement in Australia: What's actually happening in the courts?
The Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia (IPRIA) and The Institute of Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys of Australia (IPTA) are holding a free public seminarin relation to IP Enforcement in Australia(What's actually happening in the courts?). The seminar will be held in Melbourne on 9 November 2005 and Sydney on 21 November 2005.
"In recent years, there has been concern expressed by some IP owners in Australia that courts are "anti-IP", and an increased interest by policy-makers in how IP rights are used and enforced in Australian courts. In response to a lack of empirical data on IP enforcement and IP litigation in Australia, IPRIA created a database of all IP enforcement decisions of Australian courts for the period 1997-2003. Kimberlee Weatherall will present the results of the study, particularly as they relate to patent and trade mark litigation, and will discuss some of the policy implications".
To find out more visit the IPRIA website here.
| IPRIA Website | IPTA Website | IP Menu Website |