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The Office is seeking to undertake a major programme of work to review the business processes and IT systems which support the delivery of patent rights to customers. This work will include migrating data and functionality from the existing mainframe system to a modern alternative. It is envisaged this will provide a number of benefits including improving our service offering to customers with more services offered electronically, greater integration between systems and more flexibility to provide new services in future.
The work will be divided into a number of small projects which it is anticipated will be delivered over the next few years.
New projects launched or resumed this year in the context of the policies and plans mentioned above, short description: aims, partners, tasks
See entry above in relation to the development of patent information activities.
Main areas of patent information activities and related information and communication technology (ICT) practices which were in the focus of attention last year
See entry above in relation to the development of patent information activities.
Statistics: changes in terms of application filings and grants with respect to previous year; trends or areas experiencing rapid changes
Applications for national UK patents went up from 22,936 in 2013 to 23,040 in 2014 (+0.5%). Of these, applications from UK residents increased from 65.2% to 65.9%. The number of Patents granted decreased from 5235 in 2013 to 4986 in 2014 (-4.8%).
Other matters and useful links (URLs): annual report of the Office, news page, statistics, etc.
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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.gov.uk/government/statistics?departments%5B%5D=intellectual-property-office
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Information on filing, including Patents application guide and other materials, is available from the following web page: https://www.gov.uk/patent-your-invention
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The procedure after filing, including publication, examination and grant is described at: https://www.gov.uk/patent-your-invention
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Information regarding dispute resolution, including hearings, mediation and opinions may be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/intellectual-property-mediation
https://www.gov.uk/opinions-resolving-patent-disputes
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Results of past patent decisions are available at: https://www.ipo.gov.uk/p-challenge-decision-results.htm
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https://www.gov.uk/topic/intellectual-property/patents
Availability of the application dossier in electronic form
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https://www.ipo.gov.uk/p-ipsum.htm
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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Classification is done manually at an administrative level in accordance with CPC subclasses, which provides the basis for the structure of examining divisions and groups.
Abstracting, reviewing, and translation of the information contained in patent documents
Our staff can translate any document to or from English, French or German along with other languages using translation software made available by the European Patent Office and other national patent offices. Patent examiners check all patent abstracts provided by the applicant, and amend them where necessary to ensure that the abstract printed on the front page represents a useful search tool.
Other activities
None to report.
III. SOURCES OF PATENT INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE OFFICE
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The PDF A documents are then transferred via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) to the EPO. This is done on a weekly basis and includes a separate ST.36 XML file for the bibliographical and full text abstract data.
B-Documents
These are prepared in-house in a 5 week publication cycle using a bespoke IT system linked to PDAX (the IPO’s electronic case management system). The front page is compiled by downloading bibliographic data (XML format) from the corporate database OPTICS and merged with the rest of the specification pages from PDAX and reproduced in a single PDF image. The PDF image is then loaded onto the IPO’s publication server on our external website for customer download. The IPO no longer publishes “B” documents in paper format; the official publication means being electronic (see the following link): https://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/patent/p-os/p-find/p-find-publication.htm).
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The PDF Errata documents are then transferred via Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) to the EPO. This is done on a weekly basis and includes a separate ST.36 XML file for the bibliographical data.
(2) CD-ROM
In association with the EPO, we publish GB “A” documents on CD-ROM on a fortnightly basis, ESPACE-UK. The CD-ROM collection covers the years 1979 to date, i.e. for GB serial numbers in excess of 2,000,000.
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https://www.ipo.gov.uk/pro-types/pro-patent/pro-p-os/pro-p-journal/p-pj-data.htm
(4) ESPACENET, EPOQUE etc
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Espacenet is a free internet service which contains a number of different patent collections. GB patents published from 1895 and Granted from 2002 are available through the worldwide database, please see: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/
Official Gazettes: main types of announcements, frequency of publication, medium (on paper, on CDs, online - URL), etc.
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Website statistics are available here: https://www.gov.uk/performance/site-activity-intellectual-property-office
Information products and patent document collections (coverage, medium, etc.) available to examiners, including external collections and databases
We have a long list of external databases that we use regularly, including EPODOC, Derwent’s World Patent Index, CAS ONLINE and other specialised chemical, biotech, electrical and other databases. We interrogate these databases using a number of online hosts that we subscribe to, including EPOQUEnet, STN and others. Our official policy is that a worldwide search should be carried out as part of every patent search done in this office. Examiners are encouraged to access National Patent Office Organisation websites as necessary to search collections of patent documents, or to retrieve family member search and examination reports (e.g. EPO, USPTO, WIPO).
Information products and patent document collections (coverage, medium, etc.) available to external users, conditions of access (e.g., free of charge, subscription, etc.)
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This data is complete for all UK national applications in force in the UK and granted EP(UK) applications which are in force.
Other sources
Nothing to report.
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desktop. All staff have access to the Internet and to the office intranet and have their own e-mail (via Microsoft Outlook) and official e-mail address.
Hardware used to supporting business processes of the Office
Our corporate database (OPTICS) runs on a Fujitsu mainframe. Staff access their Windows 7 desktops via thin clients (WYSE terminals) which are connected to 24 inch wide screen monitors.
Internal databases: coverage, updates, interlinks with external sources
Register and legal status information is stored on our OPTICS database, as are a number of types of statistics. Examining group statistics, file movements etc., are recorded using a VB.NET system called PAFS (see previous entry above). In addition, we use an in house system called PDAX to electronically store and access our patent application case files. The databases referred to are updated continuously and views of the data contained on OPTICS and PDAX are made externally available via our website.
Establishment and maintenance of electronic search file: file building, updating, storage, documents from other offices included in the search file
GB patent bibliographic data is available electronically and may be searched, on our OPTICS database. Published GB patent specifications may be accessed and searched via EPOQUE and from our on-line publication server see "Main types of publication....." above.
Administrative management electronic systems (register, legal status, statistics, and administrative support)
See entry in relation to internal databases.
Other matters
Nothing to report.
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Our office takes part in numerous exchange and grant programmes with other patent offices around the world as in previous years.
Publications related to different business procedures and patent information sources available to users, for example, books, brochures, Internet publications, etc.
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Our main office is located in Newport, Wales, where the public can obtain official publications and conduct searches using Espacenet for example. In addition we also have a front office in London where customers can file applications.
Office's initiatives on providing foreign patent information in the local language(s) (e.g., machine translation tools, translation of abstracts)
Nothing to report.
Cooperation with universities, research centers, technology and innovation support centers, etc.
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https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/intellectual-property-for-business
Education and training: training courses, e-learning modules (URLs), seminars, exhibitions, etc.
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Other activities
All marketing and PR is carried out within the BOE team and we are successfully achieving coverage in a variety of regional and national media channels.
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It is also possible to exchange priority documents in paper and on CD provided the appropriate electronic signature is provided.
Participation in international or regional activities and projects related to patent information
Nothing further to report.
A
Assistance ssistance to developing countries
The Intellectual Property Office continues to have a programme of cooperation with various countries, including a number of developing countries. In 2012 and 2013, the Search and Advisory Service carried out respectively 17 and 27 free patent searches for WIPO under the programme of Patent Information Services for Developing Countries. However, for unknown reasons, no such requests for patent searches were made in 2014.
Other activities
Nothing further to report.
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