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Available patent documents
A project to expand the amount of to electronically archive Irish national patent documents which are electronically archived which commenced in 2013 continued throughout 2015. The aim of the current project is to scan all available patent application specification documents from the 1960s to the early 2000s, and to make them available to the public to view on 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 2015 with over 24,000 documents scanned to date. It is estimated that the project will take 4 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 and is using work but use its own internal staff resources and equipment.
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In relation to improving technological efficiencies, eleven substantive enhancements to the PTOLEMY administration system were developed during the year, all of which . 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 2015, with a more modern operating system.
E-Services
The Office commenced a project to develop e-filing for patents (having introduced Irish Patent Office introduced e-filing of trade mark applications in 2014 and , design e-filing in 2015 ) and is now currently developing an e-filing system for patents Patents and Supplementary Protection Certificates with . This is hoped to have a go-live date of late 2017.
The Office actively pursues an e-communications programme with the aim of improving service delivery and more efficient processing by combining electronic filing, electronic file processing and electronic communications in a way that will ultimately facilitate the introduction of paperless processing in the Office. The vast majority of Office correspondence is now issued by email and customers are encouraged to correspond by email with the Office, where possible.
In line with Government policy to promote the increased use of electronic payments in the public service and throughout the economy, the Irish Patent Office established two new commercial bank accounts which has improved the fee payment options available to its customers. 99% of the Office’s statutory fees are now paid electronically compared to 96% in 2014. In November 2013, the Office introduced a credit card terminal (CCT) to further facilitate the payment of all fees via telephone. The Office is currently working on the introduction the implementation of an E-Services project which will provide for online payment of IP fees.
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The Federated European Patent Register service provides the public with information on the legal status of European Patents and on the legal status of national both European and National patents. In the first phase of the project (already completed) the Federated Register provides a direct link to a specific application or publication number in a number selection of national patent registers including Ireland. The second phase, completed in 2015, gives the opportunity for the user to consult legal status data of EP documents in the national phase in several offices displayed ; these being displayed in a single unified list.
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A project has been initiated for an overall redesign of the Irish Patent Office website. This will allow easier, more logical pathways to the relevant information, in an improved user friendly fashion.
New projects launched or resumed this year in the context of the policies and plans mentioned above, short description: aims, partners, tasks
In 2015, the Office commenced a “Quality at source” project to ensure standardised patent data information exchange (for inclusion in Espacenet) in compliance with EPO xml XML formats and WIPO standards. This new project will allow us to firstly, establish a standardised 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).
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In recent years, the MedTech or medical devices sector in Ireland has been recognised as one of the key drivers for industrial growth for growth in the future. According to Enterprise Ireland, 17 of the world’s top 25 medical technology companies have invested in Ireland and 60% of Med Tech companies are indigenous SMEs. Ireland is now one of Europe’s medical technology “hotspots” and is recognised as a global centre of excellence, employing over 25,000 people in over 100 companies.
Over half of the medical technologies companies based in Ireland now have dedicated R&D facilities, developing new and innovative products and services. Evidence suggests that this change is resulting in more patent filings from Irish resident companies, with Irish inventors conducting their R&D in Ireland.
National full term Patent filings received during 2015 increased sharply by 72% on 2014 (from 118 to 203) while the number of short term patent applications filed also increased by 17% on 2014 (from 203 to 237). After the declines in recent years these increases are encouraging and may, in part, be indicative of the growth in the economy which patent activity tends to lag behind.
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Information regarding protection of patents outside the IE jurisdiction is available at: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Patents/Protection-Abroad
The IE patent Irish national patent register may be searched by publication or application number at:https://eregister.patentsoffice.ie/PTRegNr.aspx
The IE 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
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Availability of the application dossier in electronic form
The IE patent Irish national patent register may be searched by publication or application number at: https://eregister.patentsoffice.ie/PTRegNr.aspx
The IE patent 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.:https://eregister.patentsoffice.ie/query/PTQuery.aspx
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All abstracts are submitted in English by applicants and are checked and modified, if necessary, by the patent examiners.
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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.
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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 The HTML version was also modified to allow full bibliographic data access and document retrieval.
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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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The examiners have access to a complete catalogue of IE documents Irish national patents reaching as far back as 1927. Full document retrieval is made possible through our Patent Database search system. External databases such as Espacenet, Epoquenet and Patentscope are accessed to retrieve relevant patent information also.
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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 patents National Patent database, Espacenet, and/or Patentscope, peruse available booklets/journals or avail of an IP clinic with an examiner for pre-filing advice. These
All of these services are provided free of charge.
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Legal status information is contained in the IE Irish national patent online bibliographic data page and may be searched in our patent database search at: https://www.patentsoffice.ie/en/Patents/Patent-Searching
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Specific software tools supporting business procedures within the Office: general description, characteristics, advantages, possible improvements
In the The Irish Patent Office, provides an integrated and extensive network of applications that are available to all staff, via Microsoft Windows 10. Word processing can be carried out using Word 2010; all . All other MS Office applications, including PowerPoint, Publisher and Excel are available.
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Our Office administration software system (PTOLEMY) is used in conjunction with a SQL database for recording file movement, incoming and outgoing correspondence, fee payments, examination reports, etc. Production of office statistics is done with our IMPROMPTU statistics software. Patstat is also available to staff.
The Office ‘workspace’, hosted on Lotus Notes, contains a very large collection of essential information for staff, including: procedure manuals for particular administrative sections; PTOLEMY development and evolution requests; FAQs; etc.
All staff have access to the Internet and to the office intranetOffice Intranet. They have their own e-mail (via Lotus Notes) and official e-mail address (firstname.secondname@patentsoffice.ie).
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Our website contains a “Student Zone” which approaches the issue of IP in an easy to understand and entertaining way. This section contains a brief history of Patents, fun facts, Irish inventors, links to IP information in comic book format, etc.
A dedicated 'IP for Business' section is available on our website. This includes links to supports for SMEs and IP advice for doing business abroad.
Copies of information booklets, other national office annual reports, IP legislation, previous copies of the IPC; guides to IP Law, scientific journals and magazines, etc. are stored in our main information centre. Selections of these are available on our website.
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Our office is open to the public five days a week, where users can file applications, perform searches on our patents database, Espacenet, and/or Patentscope, peruse available booklets/journals or avail of an IP clinic with an examiner for pre-filing advice. These
All of these services are provided free of charge.
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This particular 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 and the timeframes time frames involved. Assistance in constructing a do-it-yourself search strategy for patents and using online patent databases is also provided.
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