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 expression "industrial designs" covers industrial designs and models. Offices which issue design patents should report their design patent information activities in this series of Annual Technical Reports.
Merely 242 applications for industrial designs were filed with the Office in 2003, which is in total 14.2 % decrease in comparison with 2002. From the foreign applicants the most active are Germans (28), Czechs (24) and Dutch (15).
The Slovak applicants filed 49 applications less than in 2002. The share of domestic application is 54 %.
By 31. December 2003 there were 1 512 valid industrial designs in the Slovak Republic.
For the comparison we provide statistics of the years 1999 - 2003 in industrial design area.
Tables_3 - Industrial design statistical data
Publication of industrial designs
The Office publishes registered industrial designs in the Official Gazette.
Industrial designs information forms part of the Official Gazette - “ Vestník ÚPV SR”, covering all industrial property rights in one publication. Paper form issued monthly is published in standard size A4, paperback and usually in cca 300 pages. In 2003 the Gazette had a circulation of 250 copies, of which 113 were distributed by subscription. Other copies were sent free of charge to patent information centres and contact and information points of the IPO, within the frame of industrial property information exchange to foreign offices and as the statutory copies according to the act as well. Electronic form of Official Gazette, available to the public in the Internet free of charge, contains searchable data.
The following number of industrial designs were published in the Official Gazette 2003:
Registered industrial designs 184
MS Office 97, QuarkXpress 5.0 for Windows and Corel Draw 10, Photoshop 6.0, FineReader 6.0, Adobe Acrobat 5.05 CE, SLEX99 – Lexicon of Slovak language are used for the data processing; the photocomposing and printing are carried out by the Office.
The Desk-Top Publishing technology is used for data and image inputs processing, for the Gazette and first pages of the design documents.
The Gazette contains industrial design announcements arranged in following main chapters:
- list of registered industrial designs (numerical series with classification symbols)
- registered industrial designs (arranged according to the classes of the Locarno Classification)
- registered designs with postponed publishing
- published registered designs after expiration of adjournment term of publishing
- official decisions (cancellation, etc.)
- assignments of rights and other changes of owners
- extension of the term of validity of the industrial design registration
- licence contract registered in the register
- the partial cancellation of the trademark registration
- the termination of sub-licence contracts
- the right of lien
The actual version of the International Classification for Industrial Design (Locarno Classification) is used for classifying of industrial designs, which are classified by Office´s experts.
The WIPO Standard ST.80 is used for patent and utility model bibliographic data coding in all relevant outcomes or records. All bibliographic data are being processed in electronic database form. The fully searchable data are updated and made available to the public each 15 minutes in the Internet.
Industrial design search file of the Office comprises the industrial design collection of the Slovak Republic and also former Czechoslovak Republic.
The IPO SR built in 2003 the manual industrial design search system in the card catalogue form, arranged according to international industrial design classification, updated regularly.
In 2003, within the frame of mutual exchange, the IPO SR received industrial design gazettes from the following states and organizations: AT, BA, BE, BG, BR, BX, CH, CZ, DE, EE, FR, GB, HR, HU, IT, LT, LV, MD, MK, PL, PT, RO, RU, Sl, UA, US and WIPO.
The online industrial design database serves for all industrial design procedures and searches. Select registry data are available to the public in the Internet.
It is possible to carry out searches according to bibliographic data in all the databases used for industrial designs.
Czech registered industrial designs database in the Internet is used.
WIPO International Design Bulletin CD-ROM.
Office automation management system contains industrial designs registry (data since 1993).
Administrative databases based on Lotus Domino.
Fast ETHERNET 1000/100/10 Mbit/s, WINDOWS 2000 for servers; workstations PC Pentium, Windows 2000; HP Unix for database, Informix Dynamic Server 9.21, Citrix Metaframe 1.8.
In 2003, the office’s reading room has been visited by 2028 users and 1539 of them were from the public. In total there were provided 9671 borrowings of patent and other literature made available to the public and 31558 copies of patent documents for the manual and computer search purposes, as well as copies from technical periodicals and other associated and non-patent literature were made. In 2003 there were performed 296 patent searches, 2627 trademark searches and 74 design searches based on 1200 written and 136 personal requests.
The office’s reading room including the search workstation opens daily from 7:30 to 15:00 except Wednesday (8:00-16:00).
All online services and other basic information are available via Internet address of IPO SR www.upv.sk.
The library provides following services to the public:
- sales of the Official Gazette in paper form
- on-line searches in Office’s search system, self-service during a personal visit
- general information - provided by Office’s experts
- searches upon request - orders in written and online form.
Industrial Design information on the World Wide Web:
- general information
- information about Office activities (seminars, training courses, etc.)
- application guide and forms
- relevant laws
- Annual Reports
- selected registry data
- Official Gazette
- order forms (searches, non-patent literature)
- Locarno Classification (7-th edition)
In 2003, four patent information centres and 10 contact and information points of the IPO SR were established under assistance of the EPO for the purpose of raising awareness about IP rights. The new form of co-operation was initiated by Office with regional, state and district libraries; with the State Scientific Library in Banská Bystrica and Košice and with other libraries in Zvolen, Žilina, Prešov, Trenčín, Trnava and Nitra as well as Slovak National Library in Martin and Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information in Bratislava.
Patent information centres
The main goal of patent information centres is to provide complex information services in the field of patent, trademark and industrial design information, search services, consultation and methodical assistance concerning the searching of information, making copies of required patent documents, printing records from electronic form etc. Every patent information centre serves as a contact and information point.
Contact and information points
The main goal of contact and information points of the Office is to inform the public about where they can apply for protection of the results of creative activity, and particularly to inform the general public about the existence of the national institution, which protects immaterial goods, industrial property.
The Office supported the activity of centres and contact and information points by regular sending of Slovak patent specifications in paper also on optical discs (fulltext ESPACE-PRECES CD-ROM, bibliographic data thereof on ESPACE ACCESS PRECES ) as well as announcements concerning industrial property rights in the Official Gazette form, all information materials and resources made available to the public, publications published by Office, information pamphlets, documents and forms relating to applying for protection of industrial property rights, access to office´s databases via Internet etc.
In 2003 followed the mutual exchange of patent documentation and official gazettes between the IPO SR and other offices, also international organizations, including the WIPO.
The IPO SR received from JPO registered industrial designs and from USPTO granted design patents stored on CD-ROM in the past year.
Training courses for national participants
Four Module Accredited COURSE ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY conducted by the Intellectual Property Institute of the Industrial Property Office for office employees and professional public continued in 2003 with 42 participants, out of which were 27 employees of IPO SR. An excursion to M.O.C Stará Turá – a factory manufacturing dental and medical machinery – was introduced for the first time in order to become acquainted with IP processes in SMEs conditions.
Supporting activities:
CONFERENCE
The Conference on INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN SLOVAKIA IV. was organized by the office celebrating April 26, the World Intellectual Property Day. The conference was attended by 20 lecturers and more than 60 participants, out of which were 36 external ones.
The Conference on INNOVATORY ACTIVITIES IN SLOVAKIA in the framework of UMINEX exhibition with exchange of practical information among 10 lecturers and 60 participants was organized by IPO SR.
Two day seminar on ENFORCEMENT OF IP RIGHTS for judges with 13 lecturers, 3 judges and 40 other participants, mainly from the Bureau of Customs was organized by IPO SR.
LECTURES
Lectures outside Industrial Property Office SR for seminars covering IP rights and their enforcement.
Lectures for students of economic, technical, pedagogical, environmental and law faculties of universities in Slovakia.
Special lectures in cooperation with the Slovak Association of Inventors and Innovators, Chamber of Patent Attorneys aimed at ministries and branches of economy and defense.
JOURNAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY magazine (“Duševné vlastníctvo”) published by Industrial Property Office was issued 4 times in 2003 covering all relevant fields in IP rights, copyright, trade names, domain names, logos, licenses, creativity and management with 50 original extensive papers and a number of translations, news, decisions of Industrial Property Office, Grur International and Supreme court etc.
EXHIBITIONS
Participation at INCHEBA Fair in Bratislava, the International Engineering Fair in Nitra, the FOR ARCH Fair in Banská Bystrica, IENA Fair in Nűrnberg (Germany) and EUREKA in Brussells (Belgium) with aim to provide free information and consultations in IP field.
Organisation of the third exhibition UmInEx - national invention and technical novelties exhibition in Banská Bystrica.
PUBLICATIONS
Updates of brochures on Industrial Property Office ACTIVITIES, PATENTS, UTILITY MODELS, TRADEMARKS, DESIGNS, PRODUCTS AND SERVICES and OFFICE HOME PAGE were published for the purposes of awareness campaign aimed at universities, SMEs, regional libraries, companies and broad public.
The Office issued publication 10 YEARS OF IPO SR on the occasion of decennial activity of IPO SR.
In June the first COLLECTION OF SELECTED DECISIONS of IPO SR was issued.
Two new publications covering Slovak translation of LEGAL REGULATIONS VALID IN THE EUROPEAN UNION IN INDUSTRIAL PROPERTY FIELD and CONVENTION ON GRANTING EUROPEAN PATENTS as well as eighth edition of INTERNATIONAL CLASSIFICATION FOR INDUSTRIAL DESIGNS (Locarno classification) were issued.
Two COLLECTIONS OF SPEECHES presented at conferences were issued.
OTHER
The OPEN DOOR DAY celebrating the World Intellectual Property Day was held on April 25, 2003 in IPO SR premises.