...
In 2002, codification was aimed, first of all, at tasks concerning Hungary’s accession to the European Patent Convention and at the implementation of legislation in the field of patent law.
Amendment to Law No. XXXIII of 1995 on the Protection of Inventions by Patents (Patent Law) was intended to attain the following objectives:
- creation of interface rules relating to European patent applications and European patents necessary for the integration into the system of the European Patent Convention;
- raising to statutory level and modernization of similar interface rules relating to the Patent Cooperation Treaty;
- accomplishment of amendments necessary for creating conformity with Community law, inter alia and most importantly, alignment with the EC directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions necessitated modifications;
- re-regulation of the protection of plant varieties, bringing the Patent Law into line with the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention and, where necessary, with the Community system of plant variety rights;
- assurance of harmony with our new international obligations (e.g. connected with Hungary’ membership in NATO) affecting patent law.
The Parliament adopted the amendment on October 24, 2002. Law No. XXXIX of 2002 amending Law No. XXXIII of 1995 on the Protection of Inventions by Patents entered into force on January 1, 2003.
As a condition of the entry into force of the new Law, the Hungarian Patent Office (HPO) provided for the deposit of Hungary’s instrument of accession with the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany on the basis of Parliament decision (No. 54/2002 (IX. 13.) OGY) on the accession to the European Patent Convention (which took place on October 28, 2002) and of that with the Secretary-General of UPOV on the basis of Parliament decision (No. 56/2002 (IX. 13.) OGY) on the accession to the 1991 Act of the UPOV Convention (which took place on December 1, 2002). By virtue of the deposits, accession to both Conventions entered into force on January 1, 2003, in compliance with the relevant statutory rules.
By virtue of the authorization under the Law amending the Patent Law, Decree No. 20/2002 (XII. 12.) IM on the Detailed Formalities of Patent Applications, of Documents Filed in relation to European Patent Applications, European Patents and International Patent Applications and for Applications for Plant Variety Protection was prepared.
It was also by virtue of the authorization under that Law that Government Decree No. 270/2002 (XII. 20.) Korm. on the Detailed Rules of the Organization and Activity of the Body of Experts on Industrial Property was born. In compliance with that Decree, the Body shall have been renewed by the end of March 2003.
In order to meet Hungary’s obligations deriving from accession to the European Patent Convention and from other international treaties, certain international conventions were promulgated by law and some regulations of lower level relating to other international treaties were promulgated by decrees. These were:
- Law No. L of 2002 on the Promulgation of the Munich Convention on the Grant of European Patents (European Patent Convention) of 5 October 1973;
- Law No. LI of 2002 on the Promulgation of the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants as revised on March 19, 1991;
- Decree No. 34/2002 (XII. 25.) IM on the Promulgation of the Regulations Under the Patent Cooperation Treaty;
- Decree No. 22/2002 (XII. 13.) IM on the Promulgation of the Implementing Regulations to the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973;
- Decree No. 21/2002 (XII. 13.) IM on the Promulgation of the Regulations Under the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure;
- Decree No. 45/2002 (XII. 28.) GKM on the Promulgation of the Rules relating to Fees of the Convention on the Grant of European Patents of 5 October 1973.
The Decrees entered into force on January 1, 2003.
An important step was the creation of Decree No. 42/2002 (XII. 38.) GKM on the Fees for Administrative Services in Industrial Property Procedures before the HPO. The modification provides for the fees for new procedures starting from January 1, 2003 on the basis of the amendment to the Patent Law (thus for example fees relating to European patent applications and European patents, and fees relating to plant varieties). The level of fees of old procedures were increased by an average of 9.8%. An important change is that in the case of annual fees the four-year periods of payment were replaced by two-year periods.
The Ministry of Economy and Transport prepared a draft decree on the support of obtaining and maintaining industrial property protection from special funds allocated for the patenting of Hungarian inventions abroad.
As part of the performance of legal harmonization tasks required by Hungary’s accession to the European Union, a proposal on the amendment to Law No. XXXII of 1995 on Patent Attorneys was prepared.
Due to a decrease in the number of trademark applications and the gradually increasing number of international patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and entered the national phase, the number of national patent applications (5,906) is almost equal to that of trademark applications (5,944). These two titles of protection continue to stand out from the other industrial property categories and make up together more than 93% of national applications. At the same time, only 2 applications were received in 2002 for the protection of geographical indications.
Within the framework of international cooperation, the number of applications designating Hungary rises from year to year. This increase is due to the continuous growth in the number of patent applications filed under the PCT and designating also our country. The number of (industrial) design applications filed under the Hague Agreement and designating Hungary and that of trademark applications filed under the Madrid Agreement and designating Hungary are similar to the relevant application numbers in 2001.
A) PATENTS
Foreign applicants showed a continued keen interest in the Hungarian market. The applications were filed first of all under the PCT, Hungary was designated in almost 90,000 such applications.
4,579 requests were received relating to the entry into the national phase of international applications, which represents an increase of about 17% over the figure in 2001.
The number of foreign applications filed in the national way continued to decrease similarly to the previous years. The reason for this is not a declining interest in Hungary, but the general, worldwide tendency that applicants, in accordance with their economic interests, wish to obtain protection in several countries by filing a single application, therefore they file their applications first of all within the framework of the PCT.
The increase in the number of domestic applications came to a halt, the decline on 2001 was almost 10%. Fewer applications were received both from individual applicants and from enterprises, which indicates that it is necessary to enhance the awareness of the industrial property system in order to provide the tools which may serve technology policy and competitiveness in innovation.
Table 1.: Breakdown of national patent applications by origin (1998–2002)
Table 2.: Breakdown of patent applications by origin (1998–2002)
Patent examination work in the so-called BEST system (“search+examination”) continued. The 4594 searches performed by patent examiners exceeded by about 16% the performance in 2001. The total number of searches (4,927) was nearly 4% up on the previous year.
In compliance with the provisions of the law in force, the patent examiners arranged for the publication of 3,732 patent applications. On the basis of earlier technical preparations, in 2002 altogether 5,277 patent applications were published in the Gazette of Patent and Trademarks.
As a consequence of the ever-increasing number of patent applications outlined above and with the examining capacity remaining unchanged, the number of pending applications also rises continuously, although 2002 was the first year in which the energy invested in the training of new officials recruited in the previous years recovered.
Table 3.: Granted patents (1998–2002)
Granted patents represented about 36% of the total number of completed applications. This was a 2% fall from the previous year, but in absolute terms the number of granted patents increased. More and more patent applications filed under Law No. XXXIII of 1995 are completed, where the previous role of rejections is taken over by lapse.
Considering the “balance of work”, the number of completed applications was 4,360 compared to the 5,906 applications filed in 2002.
Table 4.: Granted patents break down by technical fields
It deserves special attention that the number of Hungarian inventors and enterprises filing patent applications with the Hungarian Patent Office as a receiving Office within the PCT system increased to an unprecedented extent, by about 25%. In the year under review, 178 international patent applications were filed, compared to the 153 in 2001. To judge this growth rightly, it must be mentioned that as a result of Hungary’ s accession to the European Patent Convention on January 1, 2003, the costs for Hungarian individual applicants shall rise because of the loss of the 75% allowance enjoyed until then. This may also have encouraged Hungarian inventors to file their international patent applications still in 2002. The conscious industrial property activity of Hungarian inventors may also be attributed, among others, to the fact that the HPO informed its clients in due time of the expected modifications of the European Patent Conventions and of its Implementing Regulations.
B) UTILITY MODELS
In 2002, 351 utility model granting procedures started, which means a 10% increase from the previous year and represents at the same time the second highest figure in the past 5 years. Ninety-five percent of the applications were received from domestic applicants, foreigners chose this title of protection only in 22 cases. In the year under review, 375 applications were completed, of which 237 ended with grant, 9 with rejection and 129 with withdrawal.
Table 5.: Breakdown of utility model applications by origin (1998–2002)
Table 6.: Figures of utility model procedures (1998–2002)
P_I_Tables.doc
II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, distribution and use of primary and secondary sources of patent information
In the 107th volume of the official journal of the HPO, the Gazette of Patents and Trademarks, 12 issues were published in 2002. The number of subscribers was 250 in 2000, 232 in 2001 and 200 in 2002. The gradual decrease in subscriptions reflects the widespread use of the public electronic databases of the HPO. In 2002, the size of the Gazette was bigger than ever, it comprised 3,639 pages, within this 3,415 pages belonged to the official columns and 224 pages to the literary part. Taking into account the demands of the international exchange of documents and of education, the average number of copies was 470 per month.
The Industrial Property and Copyright Review, the supplement of the Gazette, was published six times in 2002. For the second year already, it has become, independently as well, a much sought-after publication in the circles of specialists. In 2002, there were no changes in its structure, but the quantity of the published material increased continuously (20%). The size of the column “Studies” almost doubled and amounted to 38% of the total size.
Other publication activities of the HPO were carried out as planned, depending on the availability of manuscripts. Reprints were prepared continuously both in the internal and outside printing offices. In addition to these, 1,330 (1,659 in 2001) patent specifications were published in printed and also in electronic formats. The average number of pages of patent specifications was 14.
Digital printing technology was introduced in the first quarter of 2002, the considerable investment came up to the expectations. In 2002, the two main publications of the HPO were produced smoothly during an extremely short manufacturing time, furthermore, the production of several medium standard color publications was transferred to the internal printing office. The start of the digital printing office considerably influenced the work of the Editorial Office. After the technical possibilities and limits had been recognized, the data flow became undisturbed between the Editorial Office and the digital printing office. Smaller quantities were ordered at the same time, and the electronically stored publications could be re-ordered more easily. Some 2.5 million black and white pages were printed by the digital printing office, and 80% of about 250 thousand color pages were produced by an outside printing office.
The Public Industrial Property Aggregate Collection for Search, integrating the data of all titles of industrial property protection into a uniform system, is recognized and used more and more widely. In addition to the quarterly updated DVD version issued for subscription and the version on the Intranet, which has been used by the officials of the HPO for almost two years, this database is already available to outside users on the Internet. It serves not only as an excellent integrated search tool, but by means of directed search it may take up the role of the electronic gazette and electronic registers, with color figures, characteristic texts (patent abstracts in Hungarian and in English, claims, trademark classes, etc), furthermore, it offers the “pdf” version of about 40,000 full text patent specifications for browsing and printing.
The following synoptic tables present the current status of “coverage” by electronic data wealth by titles of industrial property protection.
Table 12.: Patents
Table 13.: Utility models
The attendance of the HPO’s Website increased in the first half of the year, however, not to the same extent as previously, since from January on, the independent databases (Hunpatéka Online, Trademark database and Design database) have not been updated, and in April, they were removed from the main page and from the site map. On the home page only the Hungarian industrial property database PIPACS and the gazette database appear. The reason for the existence of the gazette database is that it also shows the state of earlier issues of the gazette, while PIPACS always displays the most recent state. From September on, the attendance values dramatically decreased, because at that time the URL addresses of the earlier databases were redirected to PIPACS. Those persons, who reached the earlier databases through bookmarks or other direct branchpoints, could have access only to PIPACS. Due to the above-mentioned changes, in 2002 the yearly average of attendance was 320,000.
The HPO continues to supply data, as it was introduced in 2000, to the Esp@cenet database of the European Patent Office which is intended for small and medium-sized enterprises of the continent. This concerns the data of published patent applications and granted patents and full text patent specifications according to the national system of publication. The EPIDOS INPADOC database having a long-standing tradition serves as a basis for Esp@cenet, it is the former database where the HPO has been sending Hungarian patent and utility model data for decades.
The production of the ESPACE-PRECES CD is carried out smoothly, in accordance with the conditions of the agreement of the eight participating Central and Eastern European offices renewed at the end of the year. In 2002, 13 issues of ESPACE-PRECES and 2 issues of ACCESS-PRECES were published with the patent specifications of these offices. Two further offices, those of Yugoslavia and Croatia expressed their intention to join the consortium. The data supply by the new partners will probably start in the first quarter of 2003.
The general professional demand for the UPOVROM CD database containing international plant variety rights in a searchable format may help keep Hungary’s role in the publishing program of WIPO.
P_II_Tables.doc
III. Matters concerning abstracting, classifying, reclassifying and indexing of technical information contained in patent documents
...