Where URLs are requested below, it is preferred that either URLs which are likely to remain stable over time (three years or more) are provided, or home (main) page URLs are provided with a short explanation of how to access the corresponding information.
The Industrial Property Law of 30 June 2000 applies in the field of industrial property protection in Poland.
In 2008, additionally the following implementing acts were issued:
- Regulation of the President of the Council of Ministers of 20 May 2008 on registers kept by the Polish Patent Office (Dz.U. No 91, item 564), in force from 12 June 2008;
- Regulation of the President of the Council of Ministers of 15 May 2008 on filing in an electronic form of applications for the protection of inventions, medicinal products and plant protection products, utility models, industrial designs, trademarks, geographical indications and topographies of integrated circuits, and on carrying out correspondence in an electronic form (Dz.U. No 89, item 540), in force from 7 June 2008;
Regulation of the Council of Ministers on fees relating to the protection of inventions, utility models, industrial designs, trademarks, geographical indications and topographies of integrated circuits - Regulation of the Council of Ministers of 26 February 2008 amending the Regulation on fees relating to the protection of inventions, utility models, industrial designs, trademarks, geographical indications and topographies of integrated circuits (Dz.U. No 41, item 241), in force from 26 March 2008.
In 2008, the Polish Patent Office received in total 20 599 trademark applications and notifications of international registrations designating Poland, including 15 772 applications filed under the national procedure and 4 827 notifications under the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks and the Protocol to that Agreement.
In 2008, the Patent Office received from domestic applicants:
- 448 requests for international registration of Polish trademarks under the Madrid Agreement and the Protocol to that Agreement (which is 19.4%more than in 2007). 410 requests were transmitted to the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO);
- 29 requests for Community trademark, which were transmitted to the OHIM.
Examiners from the Patent Office carried out examinations and made decisions in 24 141 trademark cases, of which 18 299 - under the national procedure and 5 842 decisions concerning international registration. The number of trademark registration rights in force on 31 December 2008 was 232 209 (114 094 under national procedure and 118 115 under international procedure).
http://www.uprp.pl/Polski/Wydawnictwa/Raporty+Roczne.htm (two-language PL/EN versions)
The constantly modernized publication system enables production of the Office's publications on its own. The publishing process is based on the DTP system and covers preparation of data contained in the Office's databases, text editing in MS Word programme and picture processing in Adobe Photoshop CS. Final typesetting is made in InDesign 3.0 programme. Printing is performed on the offset machine and digital reproducer. The texts of patent specifications are scanned in OCR technique and pictures are scanned in Adobe Photoshop programme. Then, the texts are combined with the pictures and the first page with bibliographic data. Finally, the patent specification is proof-read and printed in Ms Word programme. Printing is performed on the digital reproducer.
Announcements on trade marks are mainly published in the official gazettes on paper carrier: "Biuletyn Urzedu Patentowego" - first level Official Gazette (information on trademark applications) and in "Wiadomosci Urzedu Patentowego" - second level Official Gazette (information on registered trademarks). In 2008, there were 15 831 announcements on trademark aplications and 15 663 announcements on registered trademarks.
The relevant announcements containing ordinances of the President of the Patent Office, official announcements and communications are published in the Official Journal of the Patent Office.
All these publications are forthwith available in PDF format either on the PPO's official web site or the PPO's Online Services Portal.
Announcements regarding non-procedural matters, but coupled with the Office's activity like: general information on the PPO's tasks, references, organizational structure. Many non-regular, important announcements are immediately published within the content of the web site.
Information on trademarks is stored on mass storage media (hard disks, disk arrays, CD-ROMs, DVDs) and on paper carrier. In 2008, information was available:
1. For external users:
- on the premises of the PPO in the form of official bulletins on paper;
- in the PPO, for retrievals in the databases contained on CD-ROM (CASSIS TRADEMARK ASSIGN, CASSIS TRADEMARK BIB, TRADEMARKS OF RUSSIA, WIPO);
- via the Internet, from 8 workstations installed in the Office's Library to perform retrievals from the PPO database containing the complete verbal and graphic data on all trademarks filed and registered in Poland as well as information service on trademarks designating Poland prepared on the basis of data received from WIPO.
All staff is equipped with networked PCs, which are connected to a local area network. Standard automation products available to all staff include Microsoft Office products such as MS Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. The office intends to upgrade to Windows XP operating system at the beginning of 2009.
The Office uses ACSEPTO - the primary search system for trade marks - a tool that integrates many types of IT resources to conduct searches of trademarks.
Application documents of national trademarks are scanned and indexed: Server AIX, application-IBM Content Manager; graphic formats used are TIFF and JPG - mostly for the domestic purposes and a GIF file format is seldom utilized for the exchange purposes.
IP information on trade marks: http://www.uprp.pl/English/PPOs+databases
Online Services Portal with access to the Office’s gazettes, classifications, e-filings and patent attorney's directory: http://ipu.uprp.pl
The Polish Patent Office uses the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks (Nice Classification) 9th edition as well as the International Classification of the Figurative Elements of Marks (Vienna Classification) 5th edition.
During the procedure, the Office's staff amends goods and services that are deemed insufficiently specific by the Office’s requirements.
Checking the classification symbols is possible through the Online Services Portal of the PPO and also through the OHIM's EUROCLASS resources.
Applicants should classify the goods and services properly, there is no obligation for applicants to use pre-defined terms. For figurative marks the PPO uses the Vienna Classification system.
The trade mark’s bibliographic data is processed within procedural tasks and obligations and is afterwards utilized in many PPO’s activities including the in-house searches, decision makings, exchange and dissemination, among others.
Information on trademarks is kept and made available for searches in a paper form and on CD-ROMs.
The manual search files are successively replaced by electronic storage and retrieval systems.
The Office has stored large amounts of information in a persisting and machine-readable fashion.
We are under way of a process of disposing of some of our paper search files (domestic and foreign) to save space, in view of the extensive use of online searching in respect of our trade mark holdings.
With gradual reduction of data on CD ROM the available search files constitute mainly international databases:
- ROMARIN (WIPO), MADRID EXPRESS, CTM Online (OHIM)
The Office has an internal retrieval system (TULIPAN) with access restricted exclusively to examiners. The Office also uses variety of databases containing procedural information on newly filed trade marks, pending trademarks and registrations. The statutory searches cover Polish national marks, designations to Poland made through the Madrid Protocol, OHIM marks and designations to OHIM made through the Madrid Protocol. Data is stored in XML format. Access is carried out via browsers.
See also II, item 4.
Both the Office's web site and the Online Services Portal offer facilities for accessing Polish trademarks and designations to Poland made through the Madrid Protocol. Functionality is offered to customers to receive periodic information, information on procedure and fees and procedural information from the PPO's data bases. Links to statutory searches within procedure data bases including ROMARIN (WIPO), MADRID EXPRESS (WIPO), CTM Online (OHIM), EUROCLASS (OHIM) and the INN (WHO) among others are provided.
Commercial search services are offered by Austrian Patent Office and Hungarian Patent Office through the CETMOS Project (details at http://www.cetmos.eu ), for which the Patent Office of the Republic of Poland prepares search reports, and for OHIM through the CTM Search Report System.
The Office website is linked to WIPO trade marks and OHIM trade marks online search facilities.
Systems (MARPOL, MARMAD) based on the IBM DB2 and Java technology which provide administration of bibliographic data of national and international trade marks in the whole procedure.
The pilot environment under e-Phoenix for the purposes of electronic data storage of trade marks was run; the production is now under way and is planned to be launched in the year 2009.
The PPO workstations infrastructure includes around 4 different types of workstations configured. All of those workstations (approximately 580 PCs) are secured by McAfee antivirus and antispam system. All network connections are based on CISCO and Alcatel equipment with 20 Mb access to the Internet. Server infrastructure for the On-line Portal includes 9 application servers; 5 database servers; 10 TB build-up array; back-ups for Tivoli Storage Management, Fujitsu FI-5900C scanner, 125 packages for the purposes of qualified signatures. On-Line Portal servers are supported by local UPSs and they are also hooked to Main power supply unit for the PPO.
Back office hardware located in secured/zoned Data Centre with fire alarm and CTV system, redundant air-conditioning and technical floor.
Most of workstations run under Windows 2000, and server's operational systems are Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10. The SAN mass memory network was configured in order to make matrices available to the computing systems. Efforts were made to initiate changes with regard to the running in-house operational system. Scheduled to be completed in early 2009, all workstations are going to be upgraded and run under Windows XP environments.
The PPO's registry extracts are available to every person who applies for such a registry and pays the required fee.
As for the official publications containing trade mark information, they are available at the Office's library and on the Internet through the Online Services Portal of the PPO:
- in "Biuletyn Urzedu Patentowego" (first level Official Gazette)
- in "Wiadomosci Urzedu Patentowego" (second level Official Gazette)
The PPO data base was rendered accessible for the outside users from many workstations installed in the Office's library to perform retrievals. This data base is accessible from the user's computer via the Internet.
Trade mark information services for users were performed by the Information Unit of the Office and at the library where customers may obtain assistance within procedural information and the retrieval and searching techniques.
Excerpts, duplicates and certificates officially confirming the specified entries in the trade mark register were delivered under payment on user's demand.
Handling of modern trademark examination systems.
Holdings are regularly fed in a persisting and electronic mode, and preserved accordingly.
Computerized services and search files have for many years been available from the official PPO's web site. In 2008 they became accessible from our Online Services Portal.
See V, item 3 above, and more – the entire and complex relevant module is being prepared under the Online Services Portal; temporarily, users can download all required forms, fill in electronically, and either mail or fax them to the Office, thus initiating the trade mark procedure before the PPO.
Filing with the PPO:
National Procedure:
http://www.uprp.pl/Polski/Procedura+krajowa
International Procedure:
http://www.uprp.pl/Polski/Procedura+miedzynarodowa
Forms (including those for electronic filing):
http://www.uprp.pl/Polski/Procedura+krajowa/Formularze/Formularze.htm
Procedures before the PPO - Basic Information:
http://www.uprp.pl/Polski/Informacje+o+UPRP/Podstawowe+informacje+i+poradniki
http://www.uprp.pl/English/About+the+Polish+Patent+Office/Basic+information
Databases:
PL interface:
http://www.uprp.pl/patentwebaccess/databasechoose.aspx?language=polski
EN interface:
http://www.uprp.pl/patentwebaccess/databasechoose.aspx?language=english
Online Services Portal:
http://ipu.uprp.pl/portal/web/guest/publikacje
In 2008, the exchange of patent documentation and information with foreign patent offices was continued. The Office abroad:
- to 25 countries - 306 copies of second level Official Gazette;
- to 14 countries - 380 copies of first level Official Gazette.
The Office exchanges the trade mark data with WIPO and OHIM for the purposes of the trade marks retrievals through data bases and the relevant classifications matters coupled with the trade marks proceedings before the patent offices.
In 2008, within industrial property protection the PPO organised or participated in the following events:
- Conference "Intellectual Property Protection Influential on the Success of Women in Science and Business" organized in Warsaw by the Patent Office in cooperation with the World Intellectual Property Organisation, UN European Economic Committee, Polish Agency for Enterprise Development, National Economic Chamber and Association of Private Employers Lewiatan;
- International conference on educational platform IP Panorama for increasing the potential of small and medium-sized enterprises in IP management, co-organised by the World Intellectual Property Organization and Korean Intellectual Property Organization;
- International scientific conference "Poland and European System of Industrial Property Protection" organized by the PPO on the 90th anniversary of its foundation;
-Conference on "Combat Against Intellectual Piracy" co-organized in Warsaw by the Polish Patent Office, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Anti-piracy Association, Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, Authors Association ZAIKS;
- Annual "Scientific Picnic" of the Bis Radio in Warsaw (promotional stand);
- International Fairs in Poznan (promotional stand);
- International Symposium in Krakow on "Industrial Property in Innovative Economy - Evaluation of Patents Risks Related to Implementation" co-organized by the Patent Office, European Commission, European Patent Office, Krakow University of Technology and Jagiellonian University, Marshal of Malopolskie voivodeship, under the auspices of the Minister of Economy and Commissioner of the EC Prof. Huebner;
- Industrial Technology, Science and Innovation Fair in Gdansk (promotional stand);
- 8th National Educational Forum for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in Warsaw organized by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development (promotional stand);
- Ceremony of prize award in the 6th edition of the competition for the best artistic poster as well as postdoctoral, doctoral, master's and student's theses on the subject of industrial property organized by the Patent Office.
Awarded Posters as well as posters from previous editions were exhibited in the Museum of Posters in Warsaw.
Within the scope of promotional activities the PPO, in collaboration with OHIM and Polish Agency of Industry Development, prepared and printed the followig publications:
- "Trademarks in Business Operations of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises"- 10 000 copies;
- "10 Reasons for Using Community system" - 5000 copies;
- "Your World of Intellectual Property"- 5000 copies.
Every year the Polish Patent Office organises trainings to raise professional skills of its staff.
In 2008, after completing two-year training, 19 Office's employees obtained examiner's qualifications and 13 employees who completed their training and passed the qualifying examinations obtained assistant examiner's qualifications.
Additionally, language courses for PPO employees (languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian) were organised.
Within the framework of the training program for assistant examiners, and for newly recruited civil service members, 5 lectures for 150 participants were given on industrial property law and responsibilities of the PPO.
Moreover, staff members benefited from many specialist training courses organised by professional educational centres such as: National School of Public Administration, Institute of Accountancy and Taxes, Mazovian Voivodeship Centre for Personnel Training. The subject matter of the trainings included the issues of public procurement, management, finances, information technologies and labour law.
Continual efforts were made in order to launch in the near future the Data Disclosing System for the purposes of the Police, the Customs, and the Border Guard. The main task of the newly being designed system is making available on-line information on the subject of industrial property protection and optical carriers that are produced in Poland.
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http://www.uprp.pl/Polski/Akty+prawne/Obowiazujace+akty+prawne/default.htm http://www.uprp.pl/English/Law
Location from PL content: http://www.uprp.pl/Polski/Informacje+o+UPRP/Raporty+Roczne
Location from EN content: http://www.uprp.pl/English/About+the+Polish+Patent+Office/annual
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The PPO's News: http://www.uprp.pl/Polski/Wiadomosci%20i%20ogloszenia/Aktualnosci
The PPO's press review: http://www.uprp.pl/Polski/Przeglad+prasy