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The Office also held 47 IP clinics in 2017, which give an opportunity to the public, inventors, entrepreneurs and business people to discuss on a one -to-one basis with Patents Office staff, matters concerning IP applications they intend to make or have already made to the Office. Pre-filing interventions are carried out by examiners for non-represented applicants who do not fully understand the requirements of the Patents Act and Rules. This approach has been found to be very helpful in providing basic guidance on procedures and forms required for the registration of IP rights, the processes of obtaining IP protection in Ireland or abroad. Assistance in constructing a do-it-yourself search strategy for patents and accessing and using online patent databases is also provided.
Re-introduction of substantive examination
The Patents (Amendment) Rules 2017 (S.I. No 206 of 2017)re-introduced substantive examination of Irish patent applications. The rules set out the procedural changes to support substantive examination including the submission of a search report and written opinion as to patentability of an invention. Third party observations to the Controller in relation to the patentability of applications are also provided for.
Available patent documents
A project to electronically archive Irish national patent documents continued throughout 2017. The aim of the current project is to scan all available patent specification documents from the 1960s to the early 2000s, and to make them available to the public via our website. It is estimated that there are approximately 58,000 documents to be scanned. This project will facilitate ease of access to the data for both the public and for staff, as well as reducing the requirement for storage space for paper files. The project continued in 2017 with over 38,000 documents scanned to date. It is estimated that the project will take another 2 years to complete. As a cost saving measure and to allow continued access to the documents, the Office decided not to outsource this work but use its own internal staff resources and equipment.
PTOLEMY Developments
In relation to improving technological efficiencies, five substantive enhancements to the PTOLEMY administration system were developed during the year. All of these were aimed at improving operational efficiency and ensuring the Office’s core business systems remain current. The Office also migrated its servers to a new off-site infrastructure in 2017, with a more modern operating system. The Office also commenced the migration from Windows to Linux webservers.
E-Services
The Irish Patent Office is currently developing an e-filing system for Patents and Supplementary Protection Certificates (having introduced e-filing of trade mark applications in 2014, design e-filing in 2015). This is predicted to have a go-live date of late 2018.
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The Office is currently working on the implementation of an E-Services project which will provide for online payment of all IP fees.
Upgrade of website
An upgrade of the website infrastructure and webservers was carried out in order to replace out of date and unsupported operating systems. A new content management system was also put in place to facilitate refinement of web pages, thus expanding capabilities to manage graphics, photos, video, audio, etc. to provide an improved service to users.
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New projects launched or resumed this year in the context of the policies and plans mentioned above, short description: aims, partners, tasks
The Office engages in various co-operation and training activities as a participant in the European Patent Network which is supported by the European Patent Office (EPO). In 2017, the Office continued a “Quality at source” project to ensure standardised standardized patent data information exchange (for inclusion in Espacenet) in compliance with EPO XML formats and WIPO standards. This project will allow us to firstly, establish a standardised standardized front file delivery of patent data and secondly, collect missing back file patent data from 1973 to date in digital format covering bibliographic, image and full-text data (when the quality of the original document allows it).
The Office commenced a project to develop e-filing for Patents and Supplementary Protection Certificates (having introduced e-filing of trade mark applications in 2014 and design e-filing in 2015). This involves the development of a new structured user front end system, hosted on the Patents office website, and a complex redesign of the current administrative software system (Ptolemy) to facilitate a paperless Office
The Office has also developed a ‘Patent Specification Template Tool’ which will assist applicants (unrepresented by an Agent) to complete and fully understand the requirements of a patent application to be filed. It will produce four fully detailed specification sections to be filed electronically at the Office. These These two projects have been commenced simultaneously and are predicted to have a go-live date of late 2018.
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National full term Patent filings received during 2017 decreased by 8% on 2016 (from 149 to 137) while the number of short term patent applications filed also decreased by 5% on 2016 (from 138 to 131).
The presence of IP intensive firms in the export led, FDI and multinational sectors does mean that first patent filings are unlikely to be Irish National filings. This is because many Irish based foreign owned firms which develop IP in Ireland often have a policy of filing applications to protect those IP rights in foreign markets through their parent company which is headquartered abroad. The decrease in national patent filings does not necessarily reflect the extent to which Irish based firms or inventors are engaged in innovative activity as firms may choose to file via the European route or using the PCT route rather than through the national office.
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As at 31 December 2017, there were a total of 1,166 pending applications on hand. Of these, 180 applications were awaiting the submission of evidence of novelty.
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The number of applications received from applicants in the State was 182 compared with 22 in 2016.
The Office acts as a receiving office for European (EP) applications and also for applications filed under the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT). The number of EP applications filed in 2017 was 2. The number of PCT applications filed decreased from 23 in 2016 to 15 in 2017.
The number of European patent applications filed with the EPO in 2017 and designating Ireland was 165,629, an increase on the 2016 figure of 159,358.
Other general patent statistics include:
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Patents in force 169453
National applications were filed in the following technical fields in 2017, according to the classes of the International Patent Classification (IPC):
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G – Physics – 13.84%
H – Electricity – 9.43%
A total of 63 requests for Supplementary Protection Certificates were received during the year under the European Communities (Supplementary Protection Certificates) Regulations, 1992 (medicinal) and 1996 (plant protection products). During the year, 74 certificates were granted (medicinal and plant protection), 10 were rejected and 11 requests were withdrawn. At the end of the year there were 175 requests pending.
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Our website offers a current news page, and news archive, which can be found at: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/News
Statistics related to patents at the Intellectual Property Office can be accessed through the annual reports, annual reviews and facts and figures at:https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Publications/Annual-Reports
Information on filing, including a patent application guide and other materials for users, is available from the following web page: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Patents/How-to-Apply
Information regarding the patent procedure, including post examination and post grant, can be found at: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Publications/Information-Booklets
Information regarding dispute resolution, including hearings relating to patents and SPCs can be found at: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Publications/Written-Grounds
A link to the IE patent journal can be found at: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Publications/Download-a-Journal
A link to electronic searchable patent journals (from 2002 onwards) can be found at:https://webjournal.patentsoffice.ie
Information regarding the current patent legislation (Act and Rules) is available from: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Legislation
Information regarding fees, payments and our online fee payments module are available at: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Payments/Fees
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https://epayment.patentsoffice.ie
Other business practices and procedures are covered by web pages accessible from the main patents page: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Patents
Information regarding protection of patents outside the IE jurisdiction is available at: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Patents/Protection-Abroad
The Irish national patent register may be searched by application or grant number at:https://eregister.patentsoffice.ie/PTRegNr.aspx
The Irish national patent register may also be searched over several fields such as: title/abstract; application, grant or priority number; application date range; grant date range; legal status; IPC; inventor name; applicant name; etc. at:https://eregister.patentsoffice.ie/query/PTQuery.aspx
A link to the EPO search facility Espacenet, the EP Patent Register and WIPO Patentscope database is provided from: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Patents/Patent-Searching
II. SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES RELATED TO PATENT INFORMATION CARRIED OUT BY THE OFFICE
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None to report.
III. SOURCES OF PATENT INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE OFFICE
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The PDF documents are then transferred via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) to the EPO. This is done on a weekly basis and currently includes a separate ST.36 XML file for the bibliographical and full text abstract data.
(2) Patents Office Journal.
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From 2012 the Patents Office Journal became searchable online with full patent document retrieval, and links to Espacenet for EP designating Ireland documents. The HTML version was also modified to allow full bibliographic data access and document retrieval.
(3) ESPACENET, EPOQUE etc.
The full text, drawings and bibliographic data of all newly published Irish patent applications and granted patents is published on the EPOQUE and Espacenet system soon after the given publication date.
(4) Annual Report
A report, providing information on statistics, IP application trends, office activities, office projects, training, patent information dissemination, etc. is published on a yearly basis. It is provided both in hard copy and electronically on our website.
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Copies of information booklets; other national office annual reports; IP legislation; previous copies of the IPC; guides to IP Law; patent case law reports; scientific journals and magazines, etc. are stored in our main information centre.
Our office is open to the public five days a week, where users can file applications, perform searches on our National Patent database, Espacenet, and/or Patentscope, peruse available booklets/journals or avail of an IP clinic with an examiner for pre-filing advice.
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This data is complete for all Irish national applications and granted patents in force.
Nothing to report.
IV. ICT SUPPORT TO SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES RELATED TO PATENT INFORMATION CARRIED OUT BY THE OFFICE
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Remote access to the full range of required tools and software is possible for the staff using Citrix remote access software.
Hardware used to supporting business processes of the Office
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All patent documents (published patent applications, granted patents) are stored both in a back server (for integration into the PTOLEMY software system) and a web publication server (for display on the patents office website). These servers are accessed by different software tools (our Document Import Tool/PTOLEMY and our Patent Database Search system).
The SPC Database Search, available on our website, provides information on all published SPC information via the bibliographic data, product type and product identity.
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Nothing to report.
V. PROMOTION ACTIVITIES AIMED TO SUPPORT USERS IN ACCESS AND EFFICIENT USE OF PATENT INFORMATION
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Nothing to report.
VI. INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION ACTIVITIES IN THE FIELD OF PATENT INFORMATION
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The Irish Office continues to have an informal programme of cooperation with various countries, including a number of developing countries.
Nothing further to report.
VII. OTHER RELATED MATTERS
Nothing further to report.
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