Annual Technical Report 2002 on Industrial Design Information Activities submitted by Estonia (SCIT/ATR/ID/2002/EE)

 

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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. Evolution of registration activities

In 2002, the Estonian Patent Office received 146 registration applications of industrial designs which is nearly twice as many as filed in 2001. Estonian industrial designs formed 22% of the total.

During 1998 to 2002 the Estonian Patent Office entered 526 industrial designs in the state register (variants excluded). 40% of the designs belong to Finnish owners, 22% to Estonian owners, they are followed by German owners with 7% and Danish owners with 5,5%. The majority of industrial designs registered in 2002 belonged to the field of recording, communication or information retrieval (160 solutions). Other classes used more frequently were those of packages and containers (82 solutions), games and toys (36 solutions), equipment for production or transformation of electricity (33 solutions), tools and hardware (32 solutions). The majority of industrial designs registered by Estonian owners belonged to the classes of packages and containers (19) and furnishing (17).

28 registration applications were pending in the Estonian Patent Office at the end of 2002. The average duration of the processing of a registration application is 2 months.

II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, and distribution of industrial design documents and of secondary sources of industrial design information, i.e., official gazettes

The official publication of the Estonian Patent Office is the Estonian Industrial Design Gazette.

The Statutes of the Estonian Industrial Design Gazette was confirmed by the Regulation of the Minister of Economics of May 15, 1998. The Estonian Industrial Design Gazette is comprised of the following parts:

1) Registered industrial designs,
2) Renewal of term of industrial design,
3) Change in data relating to the registration of industrial design,
4) Transfer of rights of proprietor of industrial design into usufruct,
5) Deletion of industrial design registration,
6) Issue of a duplicate of industrial design certificate,
7) Lists,
8) Legal acts and information.

The Estonian Industrial Design Gazette is published 4 times a year.

Mass storage media is not yet in use.

III. Matters concerning classifying, reclassifying and indexing of industrial design information according to the classification systems applied

The Estonian Patent Office uses the International Classification for Industrial Designs (Locarno Agreement). The Republic of Estonia became party to the said Agreement on October 31, 1996.
WIPO Standard ST. 80 is used for bibliographic data coding.

IV. Search file establishment and upkeep

The Estonian Patent Office has the following manual search files:

- database concerning processing of industrial design registration applications comprises files of industrial design registration applications.
- the card file of industrial designs are used for the purpose of trademark examination,
- the State Register of Industrial Designs.

V. Activities in the field of computerized search systems for industrial designs

In-house search system (offline) is under development phase.

VI. Administration of industrial design services available to the public (relating to facilities, e.g., for lodging applications, registering designs, assisting clients with search procedures, obtaining official publications and registry extracts

The computerised Estonian industrial designs database can be exploited at the reading room of the Estonian Patent Library. The searches are carried out at the request of the users and the customers pay a moderate price for the computerised services.

VII. Matters concerning mutual exchange of industrial design documentation and information

The Estonian Patent Library receives gazettes containing the information on industrial design from 33 IP offices, 30 titles are acquired by exchange and 3 titles by purchase.

At present information concerning the Estonian industrial design on machine-readable carriers is not being forwarded to our exchange partners.

VIII. Matters concerning education and training including technical assistance to developing countries

WIPO
1. Seminar "The medium level of the industrial property" (1 participant)
2. Session WIPO Academy on Intellectual Property and Development (1 partipicant)
3. WIPOnet Regional Training Workshop (1 partipicant)
4. Workshop on the Implementation and Administration of the Madrid System (1 partipicant)
Other
Language courses
1. advanced English language learning courses (30 participants)
2. advanced French language learning courses (8 participants)

Customer training activities of the Estonian Patent Library in 2002.

In 2002, the Estonian Patent Library opened a special computerized public room for industrial property information training courses. Also IP information users can work online here individually.
In 2002, we arranged 2 information days on the field of use of information concerning industrial property. Also the Estonian Patent Library began with special training courses for entrepreneurs, named “Use of the industrial property information in the product development”.
The aim of these days is to highlight the impact of the use of information concerning patents, trademarks and industrial designs and they are arranged in the library or in centres of enterpreneurship

IX. Other relevant matters