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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.
1. By virtue of the regulations of the “Industrial Property Law” (enacted on August 22, 2001), the protection of ornamental designs was replaced by the protection of industrial designs.
1. In 2003, the Polish Patent Office (PPO) received 2.502 industrial design applications, including 1.916 domestic and 586 foreign applications. The number of applications was of 144% more than in 2002.
2. In 2003, 3.782 decisions were taken, 3.545 being positive on the registration of designs. The number of decisions increased of 23,4% as compared with 2002.
3. The number of exclusive rights in force on December 31st, 2003 was 4.327 for industrial designs.
Industrial design documentation is available in the Office’s reading-room and in the “Announcements of the PPO” which is issued monthly on paper and available on our web page in the PDF format.
The 7th edition system of the Locarno Classification was used in 2003. The existing files are not reclassified.
Application documents were scanned and indexed.
The file of ornamental designs, which had been replaced by industrial designs, comprises the industrial designs’ documentation of Poland and official bulletins of foreign offices containing registered industrial designs. In 2003 the file was being expanded.
11.400 copies of descriptions of Polish industrial designs, ornamental designs were included into the files.
The system of administration and search in the field of industrial designs was supported as an in-house system- WZOPRZEM
The following tools were used:
• DB2 and JAVA- managing trademark and industrial design database
• Pearl, PHP, C#. NET – creating of inter- and intra- websites
• IBM CONTENT MANAGER- managing the application documents of trademarks and industrial designs
• SQL SERVER and C#- managing the external database
• ULTRANET and IRIS- supporting the net access to optical discs
• Adobe and Corel software – publishing issues
Full text specifications of industrial designs registered in the PPO organized in classified collections were displayed for the users in our Office’s Library. We receive official bulletins from 15 countries which are available to users.
In addition to the search facility, the Patent Office website provides information relating to design registration including forms and fees, legal decisions, guides for applicants. Information is also available from our enquiry centre.
690 copies of the "Announcements of the PPO" were sent to regional patent information centres in Poland and 430 copies to 39 countries
Within international exchange we receive official gazettes containing data on industrial designs on paper and on CD-ROMs.
Conferences and symposia on issues relating to basic responsibilities of the Patent Office, i.e. receiving applications and granting exclusive rights for subjects of industrial property, including industrial designs.
In co-operation with the Polish Chamber of Patent Attorneys and the OHIM the PPO organized a seminar on “Community trademarks and designs”.
Members of the PPO’s staff participated in conferences, meetings and training courses organized in other countries by the international organizations such as OHIM (8 people). The courses focused on various issues including industrial designs.