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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
Smart Examination System (April to December 2015)
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This aims to build a next-generation search system for patents and utility models which can bring exact search results so as to improve the quality of examination. Related tasks are 1) to improve the search performance by employing next generation search engine, 2) to provide extended search results by linking search functionalities, 3) to increase the search quality through high quality information, and 4) to eventually implement optimized and customized search environment for KIPO examiners.
Main areas of patent information activities and related information and communication technology (ICT) practices which were in the focus of attention last year
Statistics: changes in terms of application filings and grants with respect to previous year; trends or areas experiencing rapid changes
The changes in filings/grants for patents/utility models in 2015, compared to 2014, are as follow:
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Information and support provided by the Office to applicants regarding filing on paper and/or e-filing (instructions, seminars, etc.) - URLs
To integrate scattered counseling resources and promptly provide technical advice, the Customer Service Center was established in March 2002. Its main services are on the following issues:
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All patent and utility model applications filed at KIPO are made available in electronic format for its administrative processing including examination, publication, and trial. In 2015, 98.3 percent of the total patent applications and 90.1 percent of the total utility model applications were filed online via the e-filing portal mentioned above. The rest of such applications which were filed in paper are also digitalized in electronic format, along with all the other application-related documents including amendments and intermediate documents. This digitalization process employs multi-OCR, dual key input, automatic verification and color scanning. In 2015, 3510 patent applications and 859 utility model applications were digitalized.
Classification1, preclassification2 (if applicable), reclassification3 activities; classification systems used (e.g., International Patent Classification (IPC)); matters concerning indexing of patent information
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Information products and patent document collections (coverage, medium, etc.) available to external users, conditions of access (e.g., free of charge, subscription, etc.)
Korea Industrial Property Rights Information Service (KIPRIS)
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Legal status information (kind of information, coverage, medium, etc.)
KIPO’s legal status information is made available at KIRPISPlus, mentioned above. Such information can be identified with 148 kinds of legal status codes and 234 types of event codes, and is updated every two weeks. Legal status codes represent the administrative progress of an application, while the event codes represent the ground for such legal statuses, for example, receipt and dispatch of documents. Some examples of such legal status codes are ‘application to register extension of patent right term by permission,’ ‘application to register an extension for term of patent right due to registration delay,’ ‘request for examination,’ ‘request for registration of extension of term of patent right,’ ‘request for preferential examination,’ ‘maintenance of original decision after re-examination before a trial,’ ‘decision to grant registration after re-examination before a trial,’ etc. As of the end of 2015, it had a database pertaining to 2.6 million documents of patent and 0.1 million documents of utility model.
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Specific software tools supporting business procedures within the Office: general description, characteristics, advantages, possible improvements
There are a total of 4122 software applications to support KIPO’s business procedures such as search, examination, registration, and trial in 175 types of the five groups, as below:
• System software: 12 types (i.e., DBMS, web server, middleware)
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Hardware used to supporting business processes of the Office
• Server: 52 UNIX Enterprise servers, 111 NT servers, and 145 Linux servers
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In 2015, the following activities were conducted for the sake of stabilization and improvement of hardware performance:
- 19 times of preventive exercise to respond to complex system hazard;
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Internal databases: coverage, updates, interlinks with external sources
The patent and utility model database, created from applications, has been continuously updated and refined for search purposes. It includes bibliographic data (1983-1998), publications of applications (1983- ), publications of grants (1948- ), and KPAs (1979- ). Such data is provided in different formats depending on the time of creation and publication, such as image, SGML or XML.
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Establishment and maintenance of electronic search file: file building, updating, storage, documents from other offices included in the search file
File building and updating
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Patent library: equipment, collection management, network of patent libraries in the country, cooperation with foreign patent libraries
IP Digital Library
The IP Digital Library archives patent documents, such as bibliographic data, abstracts and full texts, in a variety of media such as paper, microform, CD-ROM and DVD-ROM. The documents are obtained through exchange agreements with 18 countries and 4 international organizations, including the EPO, USPTO, and WIPO. The library also has non-patent literature (some of which has been donated, while others were purchased), comprising of over 36,091 volumes and 546 kinds of periodicals related to science and technology, and CD-ROMs of annual reports and statistics. The collections are arranged according to their category and volume number. KIPO examiners and the public are allowed access to this collection. The electronic database is provided at the Internet corner of the IP Digital Library. The library also offers original copies of electronic materials, such as electronic journals and e-books mentioned above.
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KIPO has shared IP related publications and information with:
• The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information through DDS (Document Delivery Service) for complimentary or subscription-based materials and through the NDSL (National Digital Science Library) service which provides access to the academic theses and scientific journals of 722 domestic libraries and information centers
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Publications related to different business procedures and patent information sources available to users, for example, books, brochures, Internet publications, etc.
• Business procedures (filing, publication, examination, grant, opposition, appeal, etc.): http://www.kipo.go.kr/kpo/user.tdf?a=user.english.html.HtmlApp&c=92000&catmenu=ek03_01_01
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Office's initiatives on providing foreign patent information in the local language(s) (e.g., machine translation tools, translation of abstracts)
To serve its examiners and the general public, KIPO has developed its Machine Translation (MT) services-—Japanese to Korean (J2K), English to Korean (E2K), Korean to English (K2E) and Chinese to Korean (C2K) MT services —and provided such services on the respective search systems called KOMPASS and KIPRIS. However, the K2E service is unavailable to examiners. Those MT services are based on the employment of dictionaries, translation memory (TM) and translation patterns of the respective bilingual words matches. In addition, KIPO also conducts MT quality evaluation on a regular basis. As of the end of 2015, each service is supplemented with:
- E2K: 3.9 million terminologies, 60 thousand TM, and ten thousand translation patterns;
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International exchange and sharing of patent information in machine-readable form, e.g., priority documents, bibliographic data, abstracts, search reports, full text information
Data acquisition and uploading
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Participation in international or regional activities and projects related to patent information
Global Dossier
Global Dossier aims to allow each office’s examination information to be retrievable at a single portal and allow applicants to have the effect of simultaneous filing to multiple offices by a single filing. This concept was proposed by the USPTO in November 2011 among the IP5 offices (i.e., EPO, JPO, KIPO, SIPO, and USPTO). In line with this, KIPO launched its OPD service for examiners in August 2013, for the sake of the retrieval of examination information for IP5 family applications with application numbers at a time. In the meantime, the IP5 offices made an agreement on making the OPD service open to the public at the IP5 Heads meeting held in June 2013. To this end, KIPO launched its OPD Public Service in March 2015 and connected its OPD Examiner Service to WIPO CASE in order to share examination information with many more IP offices such as Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, Israel, and Brunei Darussalam.
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Assistance to developing countries
KIPO-WIPO Joint IPR Education Projects
WIPO and KIPO have jointly managed the Advanced International Certificate Course, which is a blended IP program based on IP Panorama, targeting WIPO member states. In 2015, 641 trainees from 86 countries took the online course and 32 trainees from 19 countries attended the offline course of the blended program. In collaboration with the WIPO Worldwide Academy (WWA), KIPO has also offered the DL-101 course that covers the main areas of IPR in English to students of domestic universities that are affiliated with KIPO. Students who take these courses are issued with WIPO WWA and KIPO joint certificates. In 2015, 1585 students in 11 universities completed the course. Moreover, WIPO and KIPO jointly developed a mobile version of IP Panorama and had a launching ceremony for a global version of “IP Ignite” in Geneva.
Other activities
PATINEX 2015
To exchange information and facilitate the use and dissemination of IP information, an annual IP conference titled PATINEX (PATent INformation EXpo) has been conducted by KIPO since 2005. The conference is comprised of three events: a conference which focuses on the introduction of strategies and practices of IP information; an exhibition which shows diverse, up-to-date services and solutions of IP information; and a workshop where participant service providers give in-depth consultations on the use of IP information. The ninth PATINEX was held in September 2015, consisting of:
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