Annual Technical Report 2013 on Industrial Design Information Activities submitted by Croatia (CWS/ATR/ID/2013/HR)

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

The expression "industrial designs" covers industrial designs and models. Offices which issue design patents should report their design patent information activities in this series of Annual Technical Reports.

I. GENERAL OVERVIEW OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN INDUSTRIAL DESIGN INFORMATION ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT BY THE OFFICE

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

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

In the year 2013, the number of industrial designs applications filed by national route decreased by 26 % compared to the previous year, whereas the number of designs contained in industrial designs applications decreased by 17% compared to the previous year.

The number of application filed by international route (Hague Agreement) remained almost at the same level compared to the previous year, whereas the number of designs contained in internationally filed application increased 8 % compared to the previous year.

Statistics_hr_id_2013

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

Annual reports:
http://www.dziv.hr/en/about-sipo/annual-report/archive/
Statistics:
http://www.dziv.hr/en/about-sipo/ip-statistics/
http://www.dziv.hr/en/the-croatian-intellectual-property-gazette/ (Official Gazette)
News:
http://www.dziv.hr/hr/novosti/ (HR)
http://www.dziv.hr/en/news/ (EN)

II. SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES RELATED TO INDUSTRIAL DESIGN INFORMATION CARRIED OUT BY THE OFFICE

Information and support provided by the Office to applicants regarding filing on paper and/or e-filing (instructions, seminars, etc.) – URLs

Filing on paper (instructions, Guidelines on the basic requirements of industrial design protection in Croatia with the practical examples):
http://www.dziv.hr/files/File/obrasci/industrijski/uputa_dizajn.pdf
http://www.dziv.hr/files/File/obrasci/industrijski/Industrijski_dizajn_vodic.pdf
E-filing :
http://www.dziv.hr/hr/e-usluge/e-prijava/

WIPO's Leaflet: “Looking Good: An Introduction to Industrial Designs for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises“.
http://www.dziv.hr/files/File/obrasci/industrijski/Dobar_izgled.pdf (HR)

Availability of the application dossier in electronic form

Official Gazette:
http://www.dziv.hr/en/the-croatian-intellectual-property-gazette/

Industrial Designs search:
http://www.dziv.hr/hr/e-usluge/pretrazivanje-baza-podataka/industrijski-dizajn/ (HR)
http://www.dziv.hr/en/e-services/on-line-database-search/industrial-designs/ (EN)

Classification and reclassification activities; classification system used, e.g., International Classification for Industrial Designs (Locarno Classification), other classification

The 10th edition of the Locarno Classification has been used since January 1, 2014.

III. SOURCES OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE OFFICE

Main types of publications in the field of industrial design information, outline of the content (industrial design applications, design patents, registrations, etc.) and medium (on paper, on CDs, online – URLs)

Official Gazette :
http://www.dziv.hr/en/the-croatian-intellectual-property-gazette/

Industrial Designs search:
http://www.dziv.hr/hr/e-usluge/pretrazivanje-baza-podataka/industrijski-dizajn/ (HR)
http://www.dziv.hr/en/e-services/on-line-database-search/industrial-designs/(EN)

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

Since the 2006 Official Gazette of the SIPO is published monthly, and starting with the issue No. 05/2009 of May 2009 the Office discontinued publishing the Gazette in printed version and publishes it since only as an electronic publication. From October 2013 the frequency of Gazette’s publication has increased to every two weeks publication. The Gazette is fully available free of charge in the PDF-format at the official Office's web site http://www.dziv.hr/en/the-croatian-intellectual-property-gazette/, including the archive of the earlier editions (since the beginning of the electronic publication only). The gazette is also published on CD-ROM as an annual collection or individual publication at the request of a user (against the payment).
Official Gazette contains following information on industrial design: Publication of Changes Entered in the Industrial Design Register, Publication of Industrial Design, Industrial Design Indexes by Numbers, Classification Symbols and Owners, Publication of Changes Entered into the Industrial Design Register, Publication of Corrections of Data to Published, Industrial Design Registrations, Publication of the Granted Industrial Designs Extensions Publication of Industrial Design Expirations, Publication of Information on International Registrations of Industrial Designs with effect in the Republic of Croatia. The information regarding published industrial design registrations is also available in the Office database containing public data from the Industrial designs register, accessible through the Office website, free of charge. A range of search options is available, including: Date of Application, Proprietor, Image, Locarno Class.

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

Industrial Designs Register available to examiners and formality officers is used for filing all bibliographic data concerning the particular design application. The Register is interlinked with the electronic depository of the design documents. The coverage of the national industrial design documents in electronic form is complete since year 2000 and partially since 1991 when the Office was established. The document collection is maintained by an in-house developed document management system.

International industrial designs data in XML format are weekly downloaded from the WIPO’s ftp site. After processing data are available through the related software tool. Those data are used for substantive examination of the international industrial designs designated for Croatia.

Information products (coverage, medium, etc.) and services available to external users; conditions of access (e.g., free of charge, subscription, etc.)

General information regarding the industrial designs and industrial designs registration procedures are provided free of charge. They can be obtained face-to-face at the Office’s information centre (acronym INCENTIVE), by phone, via fax, e-mail or posted letter, and are also available at the Office’s web site: http://www.dziv.hr/hr/intelektualno-vlasnistvo/industrijski-dizajn/. Professional search services of the industrial designs databases as well as registry extracts are available upon user’s request against payment.
Standard design search services, based on the appearance and description, include the following search criteria: applicant/owner, class, subclass, or name of the product according to the Locarno Classification, and bibliographic data printouts. Tailor-made search services are also available, if requested.

Data regarding published industrial designs applications and grants are available to the public free of charge through the Office’s web site http://www.dziv.hr/en/e-services/on-line-database-search/industrial-designs/(EN)
Access to the databases of the other relevant authorities, available from the relevant web pages, are also offered to the users (Hague Express Database http://www.wipo.int/ipdl/en/hague/search-struct.jsp and DesignView Database https://www.tmdn.org/tmdsview-web/welcome?lang=hr)

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

Detailed legal status information are available in the Industrial Designs Register ,while the basic information on the legal status are available on the Office's web site:
http://www.dziv.hr/en/e-services/on-line-database-search/industrial-designs/

IV. ICT SUPPORT TO SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES RELATED TO INDUSTRIAL DESIGN INFORMATION CARRIED OUT BY THE OFFICE

Specific software tools supporting business procedures within the Office: general description, characteristics, advantages, possible improvements

A wide set of software tools has been developed in-house to support business procedures of the Office, providing a range of tools for efficient processing of the applications and other documents. Office's software system is in the process of migration to a new open-source platform.
International industrial design data in XML format are monthly loaded from the WIPO’s ftp site. After processing data are available through the related software tool.

Hardware used to supporting business processes of the Office

- 20Mbit/s leased line used for Internet connection,
-CISCO Network Equipment (LAN based on Fast Ethernet - 1000/100/10 Mbit/s).

SERVERS:
All servers are virtualized under VMware (except mail server)

VMware vSphere 5 Essentials Plus Kit for 3 hosts, 192 GB RAM
-Physical Servers: -Dell PowerEdge R610 64GRAM; 12 x CPU Intel Qeon
-Dell PowerEdge R620 64GRAM; 8 x CPU Intel Qeon
-Dell PowerEdge R620 64GRAM; 8 x CPU Intel Qeon

Virtualized servers are on the following operating systems:
- Win SERVER 2008 R2 Enterprise
- Win SERVER 2003 St. Ed.
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- SUSE Linux Enterprise 10
- Debian GNU/Linux 6

Mail Server:
- MS Exchange 2010 Server Enterprise,
- Physical Server : Fujitsu RX300 S5
- OS Win SERVER 2008 R2 Enterprise

- Workstations: Desktop-PC Pentium IV with WIN XP PROF or WIN 7., Notebooks - OS - MS WIN 7.

Storage
- SAN
-twoFiberCAT CX500 (EMC) devices. Each of them has two-service processor and 10 disks in -RAID-5 system (9 x 146 Gb FC disks + 1 x 146 Gb FC hotspare disk).
-NAS
-NetApp DATA ONTAP Release 8.0.2P4
-IBM N3400, 12x600GB SAS, 24x 1TB SATA disks

Backup software
-SYMC BACKUP EXEC 2012 Server Win Per Server Bndl
-SYMC BACKUP EXEC 2012 Option Ndmp Win Per Server
Backup device
- Dell PowerVault TL2000

Internal databases: coverage, updates, interlinks with external sources

The bibliographic data are stored in the industrial designs database and designs images are stored in a network file directory. They are interlinked by different software tools. Data coverage is a complete set of industrial designs data since year 2000 and partial data since 1991 (when the Office was established).

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

The Office does not carry out examination on the novelty and individual character of industrial design as a part of the granting procedure so no search file is built in the processing of application. Published industrial designs data (grants) can be searched at the Office's web site through the web-server application (MS Windows 2003 server and mySQL database).

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

Office’s library (if deals with industrial design information): equipment, collection management, network of libraries in the country, cooperation with foreign libraries

The Office’s Library:
http://www.dziv.hr/hr/informacije-usluge/knjiznica (HR)
http://www.dziv.hr/en/sipo-information-services/library/ (EN)
The Office’s Library operates within the Office’s information centre (acronym INCENTIV). Library public services include access to the collections and in the reading room, available to public during the working hours of INCENTIV. Browsing of Library collections is available at the premises and on-line at Office’s web page (http://knjiznica.dziv.hr/). User inquiries and reservation requests could also be made via e-mail knjiznica@dziv.hr. The collections contain numerous books and periodicals, primarily in the field of IP or related fields, and are catalogued in the database which is regularly maintained.

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

The Office’s Library:
http://www.dziv.hr/hr/informacije-usluge/knjiznica/ (HR)
http://www.dziv.hr/en/sipo-information-services/library/ (EN)

Guidelines on the basic requirements of industrial design protection in Croatia with the practical examples
http://www.dziv.hr/files/File/obrasci/industrijski/Industrijski_dizajn_vodic.pdf (HR)

Industrial Designs leaflets:
WIPO's Leaflet: “Looking Good: An Introduction to Industrial Designs for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises:
http://www.dziv.hr/files/File/obrasci/industrijski/Dobar_izgled.pdf
Basic industrial design information:
http://www.dziv.hr/files/File/obrasci/industrijski/brosura_dizajn.pdf (HR)
Industrial design search instruction:
http://www.dziv.hr/files/File/obrasci/industrijski/Letak_DIZAJN

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

The Office has a developed cooperation with a range of partners, including universities, technology and innovation support centers, development agencies etc.

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

Some of the lectures and related events organized in 2013:
„Retrieval and use of IP information“,
Faculty of Chemical Engineering and Technology, University of Zagreb, February, 2013;
„Intellectual Property and innovations in the light of state aid“,
in cooperation with Ministry of entrepreneurship and crafts, Zagreb, February, 2013;
„Basics of Intellectual Property for entrepreneurs and scientists“,
Tera Tehnopolis (technology center), Osijek, April 2013;
„Trademark and Industrial Design“,
Faculty of Architecture, University of Zagreb, May, 2013;
„Searching of IP data bases“,
Vern Polytechnics, Zagreb, June, 2013;
Study visit of the students of Law Faculty in Rijeka to the Office, Zagreb, December 2013.

Workshops organized in 2013:
„Value of Intellectual Property, for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises“, June 2013
„Training of Trainers „ for Consumers Society, Zagreb, June 2013
„Intellectual Property Rights“, Workshop for Judicial Academy, Zagreb, October 2013.


Promotional events organized in 2013:
“Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy”, public awareness campaign, Rovinj, July 2013;
“SASO2013 - International trade fair”, information boot, Split, December 2013.

VI.INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ACTIVITIES IN THE FIELD OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN INFORMATION

Participation in international or regional activities and projects related to industrial design information

The Office participates in Liaison meetings with other national industrial designs offices of the European Union member states and the Office for the Harmonization in the Internal Market of the European Union (OHIM) and plans to extend this cooperation to the Convergence programs and Cooperation Fund projects of the OHIM related to industrial designs.

VII. OTHER RELATED MATTERS