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The 444 new, national design applications filed under Law No. XLVIII of 2001 on the Legal Protection of Designs included about 1,200 designs. Thus, it may be stated that although the number of applications was somewhat down on the previous years, a considerable increase was experienced in the number of designs. The doubling of the number of designs to be protected shows that the Law which entered into force on January 1, 2002, lived up to expectations and gave a new impetus for this field of intellectual property protection.
The number of completed applications corresponds to that of new applications. In 2002, the procedure was completed in altogether 507 cases, of this total, the examiners proceeded according to the provisions of the new Law in 81 cases. In the long run, the balance of filed and completed applications results in a stable pendency time and in an optimal number of pending cases. In 2002, only one request for invalidation was received, which is a surprisingly low number.
During the year under review, the procedure was completed in 5 cases of invalidation and in 1 case of lack of infringement, therefore in this title of protection there is no pending case to be decided by a board.
The number of international design applications was 1,074, in which altogether 3,916 designs were included. In all cases examination was performed within the prescribed 6 months. During the year, protection extending to Hungary was granted for 984 international applications which represent 3,588 designs. Three applications, reflecting 5 designs, were refused.
Table 7.: Breakdown of design applications by origin (1998–2002)
Table 8.: Figures of design procedures (1998–2002)
D_I_Tables.doc
II. Matters concerning the generation, reproduction, and distribution of industrial design documents and of secondary sources of industrial design information, i.e., official gazettes
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 14.: Designs
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.
D_II.doc
III. Matters concerning classifying, reclassifying and indexing of industrial design information according to the classification systems applied
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