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.
In the area of designs the existence of Community design system had significant impact on the number of foreign applications. Compared to the preceding year the number has decreased by 60.6 % to 13.
93 applications for industrial designs were filed with the Office in 2006. It is in total 32.1 % decrease in comparison with 2005. From the foreign applicants the most active are Czechs (6).
Although the Slovak applicants filed by 24 applications less than in 2005 (decrease by 23.1 %). Share of domestic application makes 86 %.
126 designs has been registered in the year 2006, that is less by 16 % than previous year.
On December 31, 2006 there were 1,581 industrial domestic design registrations valid.
For the comparison there are the statistics of the years 2000 - 2006 in industrial design area:
URL to annual technical reports on designs:
http://www.wipo.int/scit/en/atrs/
http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=sk&idd=9&idd2=909
URL to the Annual reports of the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic:
http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=11&idd2=92
Publication of industrial designs
The Office publishes registered industrial designs in the Official Gazette.
Official Gazette "Vestník ÚPV SR"
Industrial design 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 2006 the Gazette had a circulation of 250 copies, of which 99 were distributed monthly by
subscription. Other copies were sent free of charge to patent information centres and contact and information points of the IPO, to information and consulting sites INNOINFO, 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, which are regularly updated.
The following numbers of industrial designs were published in the Official Gazette 2006:
129 registered industrial designs
134 registered industrial designs with the extended term of validity
MS Office 97, Photoshop 6.0, FineReader 7.0, Adobe Acrobat 6.0 CE, Agfa FotoLook 3.5, SLEX99 – Lexicon of Slovak language are used for the data processing; the photocomposing and printing is 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)
- bibliographic data of registered industrial designs (arranged according to the classes of the Locarno Classification)
- list of registered industrial designs with the extended term of validity (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of registered industrial designs with the extended term of validity (arranged according to the classes of the Locarno Classification)
- list of registered industrial designs with postponed publishing (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of registered industrial designs with postponed publishing (arranged according to the classes of the Locarno Classification)
- list of published registered industrial designs after expiration of adjournment term of publishing (numerical series with classification symbols)
- bibliographic data of published registered industrial designs after expiration of adjournment term of publishing (arranged according to the classes of the Locarno Classification)
- official decisions (lapse (expiration), etc.)
- assignments of rights and other changes of owners
- cancellation of the industrial designs registration
- partial cancellation of the industrial designs registration
- registration of licensing contracts in respect of industrial designs
- termination of licensing contracts
- right of lien
- corrections of names, addresses, dates and mistakes
@SKIPO - Electronic Slovak Industrial Property Office Portal
http://www.upv.sk/eskipo.php?lang=en&idd=99
@SKIPO is an integrated system of e-services that offers access to on-line databases, on-line services and @filling room. The purpose of the portal of the Office is to provide the public with all our e-services from one place and in transparent manner and gives the possibility to communicate electronically with the Office. The effort of the Office is to make available as much information in electronic form, which are placed on internal network now, as possible. All data from databases are provided free of charge.
ON-LINE DATABASES
http://www.upv.sk/eskipo.php?lang=en&idd=2
IPO SR makes accessible various databases on its homepage. Most frequently used databases are
- "Data extracted from Registers" also called as "Webregisters", give public access to information from national registers of industrial property rights and are daily updated http://registre.indprop.gov.sk/registre/?lang=en
- "Design Classifications" contains Slovak version of 8 th edition of Locarno Classification (fully searchable), links to other classifications systems for classifying designs used in the world and other useful information http://www.upv.sk/eskipo.php?lang=sk?idd=13&idd2=1303
- "Official Gazette" enables looking on an single issue, searching in the selected issue and searching in all issues http://www.upv.sk/eskipo.php?lang=en&idd=14.
In the part "Foreign on-line databases" are available links to most frequently used on-line databases http://www.upv.sk/eskipo.php?lang=sk&idd=19.
ON-LINE ORDERS
http://www.upv.sk/eskipo.php?lang=en&idd=1&idd2=
IPO SR makes available electronic order forms on Official Gazette, magazine Intellectual Property and E-zine, publications of the IPO SR and IPO CZ, Annual Reports, patent documents and searches (see the part "Products and services", chapter VI).
@FILLING ROOM
http://www.upv.sk/eskipo.php?lang=en&idd=15
Nowadays, the on-line filing room enables only filing the European patent applications and international patent applications PCT in electronic form (see the part "Medium allowed for filing applications", annual technical report on patent information, chapter VII).
The current 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 industrial design 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 daily 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 2006 the manual industrial design search system in the card catalogue form, arranged according to international industrial design classification, updated regularly.
In 2006, 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, SI, 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
WIPO International Design Bulletin CD-ROM
OHIM - Industrial Designs Database
The Office automation management system contains industrial designs registry (data since 1991) using "INVENTIO" software.
Equipment used:
LAN is built on base of the Cisco technology, Fast ETHERNET 1000/100/10 Mbit/s, WINDOWS 2000 Server; MS SQL Server 2000; workstations PC Pentium, Windows 2000, Windows XP.
Linux Red Hat Enterprise 4.0,
Informix Dynamic Server 10,
Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server 4.0,
Ultranet – Ultra Console 2000
SAN HP MSA 1500 CS,
HP Storage Works MSL 5000 series library,
HP open view Storage Data Protector version A.05.50
In 2006, the Office’s reading room has been visited by 1.701 users and 1.416 of it were from the public. In total there were provided 7.750 borrowings of patent and other literature made available to the public and 22.634 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 2006 there were performed 173 patent searches, 2.738 trademark searches and 46 design searches based on 1.093 written and 53 personally requests.
The Office’s reading room including the search workstation opens daily from 8:00 to 15:00 except the Wednesday (9:00-16:00).
All online services and other basic information are available via Internet address of IPO SR www.upv.sk.
The Office library provides following services to the public:
- general information - provided by Office’s experts
- lending service (Official Gazettes, special monographs and reference literature) in the reading room
- interlibrary lending service
- international interlibrary lending service
- sale of special monographs and periodical publications ("Intellectual Property", Official Gazette Vestník ÚPV SR” in paper) upon request or on the place
- reprographic services upon request or on the place
- on-line searches in Office’s search system, self-service during a personal visit
- searches upon request - orders in written and online form
- registry information provided in the reading room
- CD-ROM workstations available in the reading room
Industrial design information on the World Wide Web:
- general information
- information about Office activities (seminars, training courses, etc.)
- application guide and forms
- administrative fees
- relevant laws
- Annual Reports
- selected registry data
- Official Gazette
- order forms (searches, Official Gazette, special literature)
- Locarno Classification (8-th edition)
- design classifications and related information
- annual technical reports on design information (2002-2006)
Patent Information Centres and Contact and Information Points
Since 2003 the Office has established 10 contact and information points, while four of them are the Patent Information Centres. They are located in state, regional and district libraries as well as in the Slovak National Library in Martin and Centre of Scientific and Technical Information in Bratislava. A list of centres and points is available on the Office’s web site http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=10&idd2=. (For more information see the annual technical report on patent information.)
In co-operation with the European Patent Office, the Office secured participation of four employees of the patent information centres in the PATLIB Conference in Prague, where they were familiarised themselves with activities of similar PATLIB centres and they acquired knowledge about development of the patent information market. At the same time they have an opportunity to establish new personal contacts with the experts from the field of patent information.
Employees of the centres and contact points of the Office participated also in the seminar organised by the Office during the European Week of Science in the IPO SR and one employee participated in the Intellectual Property Course.
Information and consulting sites for innovations
During 2006 the Office completed extending the number of information and consultancy points of the IPO SR for innovations – "innoinfo". The Regional Chamber of the Slovak Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Lučenec, Technical University in Košice and the Slovak Technical University in Bratislava all became the new partners of the Office. (For more information see the annual technical report on patent information.)
Information Centre
In the end of 2006, the Information Centre started its work at the Office. The main goal of the Centre is to receive and to deal with the problems of the Office´s clients and the public centrally. Within their professional consultancy activities, the employees inform the public about the possibilities and most suitable ways of protection of individual subjects of industrial rights personally, by telephone (+421 48 4300 131) or in writing – its e-mail is infocentrum@indprop.gov.sk.
Workplace of the IPO SR in Bratislava
Workplace of the Office, which was opened in 2004 in the building of the Ministry of Finance in Bratislava offered especially services concerning the searches in the fields of trademarks, designs and patents in the last year. In the workplace, there is a filing room and room for discussions and negotiations .
Webregisters
http://registre.indprop.gov.sk/registre/?lang=en
IPO SR makes accessible various databases on its homepage. Most frequently used databases are "Data extracted from Registers" also called as "Webregisters". Webregisters give public access to data extracted from design register, which is kept by the Office. Data concerning in particular pending design applications, all filed applications or registered designs in the register are daily updated.
Products and services
Comprehensive information concerning the products offered by the Office and other relevant information relating to accession and utilization of the products are on http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=sk&idd=27
- Official Gazette
- magazine Intellectual Property
- IPO SR and IPO CZ publications
- E-zine IPO SR
- on-line order forms
- price list
Basic information about following information services offered by the Office including the contact and the way of their utilization are on http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=sk&idd=28
- IPO SR reading room
- design databases, information and searches
- order of technical publications
- on-line order forms
- price list
Information services offered by the Office, see the part "Information services available to the public", chapter VI.
In 2006 followed the mutual exchange of industrial design information in the form of 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.
CONFERENCE (http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=sk&idd=31)
Almost 60 participants took part in the sixth year of the Conference Intellectual Property in Slovakia, held on the occasion of the World Intellectual Property Day, the main topic of which were the national IP protection in the context of international IP developments. On this occasion, an open door day of the IPO was held, during which the Office opened its non-public premises to people. Excursion was connected with presentation of the Office and provision of information and consultancy services.
LECTURES AND SEMINARS (http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=sk&idd=31)
In July 2006 the IPO SR in co-operation with the World Intellectual Property Organisation organized an international seminar on the strategic use of IP for economic and social development in Bratislava. The objectives of the seminar were to deliberate on strategic approaches to making use of IP as an effective tool for development and to ensure their integration into national development strategies and plans, depending on specific requirements.
In November the IPO SR joined the EU initiative to devote one week to celebrate science, innovation and creativity – so-called "European Science Week". On the occasion, the IPO SR presented translation of the WIPO publication "Learn from the Past, Create the Future: Inventions and Patents", held a meeting with the press representatives who had made extraordinary contribution to popularize the IP domain in Slovakia, and held II. Users’ Day on electronic filing of international and European applications (the I. Users’ Day was held in May).
In pursuance of specific requirements the Office provided for a variety of specialisation oriented groups the lectures, presentations and educational courses related to industrial property rights protection.
EXHIBITIONS (http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=sk&idd=30&idd2=3006)
The IPO SR is continuously enhancing the public awareness on industrial property protection also by means of presentations of fairs and exhibitions. The IPO SR took part at 26th International Building Fair CONECO in Bratislava, at the 36th International Chemistry Fair INCHEBA in Bratislava, at the 13th International Mechanical Engineering Fair in Nitra, and the Exhibition of Innovations IENA 2006 in Nuremberg within a joint stand of the European Patent Offices: "Internationales Patent-Informationszentrum"
The public awareness on industrial protection is also enhanced by holding exhibitions in the internal premises of the IPO SR. Almost entire entrance premises of the IPO SR had been reconstructed to serve as an exhibition hall. In December the first exhibitor, the Slovak Technical Museum in Košice, installed an exposition called "The Personalities of Science and Technology in Slovakia". The exposition was prolonged due to success.
PUBLICATIONS (http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=sk&idd=27&idd2=2703)
List of publications for sale in Slovak and Czek http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=sk&idd=27&idd2=2703
Last year the Office released several publications. Besides the Intellectual Property in Slovakia Conference workshop VI included an adapted translation of the WIPO publication "Learn from the Past, Create the Future: Inventions and Patents" and information materials focused on a general mission of the Office, as well as new products and services provided by the IPO SR.
The trademark department processed the changes and prepared the translation of 2-volume 9th edition of the International Classification of Products and Services. Classification system is available in the Office, in the patent information centres, contact and information points of the IPO SR and "innoinfo" since January 2007.
THE COURSE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY (http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=sk&idd=31)
The Office’s Institute for Education was established in year 2000, when the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic granted the accreditation to the IPO SR for a period of five years. In January 2005 the Office has obtained a new five-year period accreditation. The lecturers are university teachers, experts from practice and the IPO SR experts. An overall number of training lessons extends to 342 hours, out of which 227 hours are lectures and the remaining training hours are devoted to hands-on practical exercising and training.
The Intellectual Property course consists of four separate parts: module A: Intellectual Property and Copyright Law Essentials; module B: Creativity - Management of Creativity, Marketing and Economics; module C: Information in the field of Industrial Property Protection; module D: Industrial Property Law. In 2006 the course was attended by 52 participants, out of which 20 employees of the IPO SR.
JOURNAL (http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=sk&idd=27)
Awareness of the public in the field of intellectual property is increased also by the professional magazine INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY magazine ("Duševné vlastníctvo") issued quarterly by the Office.
12 editions of the E-zine IPO SR e-mail magazine were released last year. The magazine in electronic form released regularly each month consists of permanent sections with information from the IPO SR, the world, monitoring of periodicals, selected information from the separate editions of the Intellectual Property Magazine and not missing was also the knowledge contest in the area of science and technology, receiving much acclaimed by E-zine readers.
Information on legislation related to designs
- legislation in force http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=21
- related legislation http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=22
- multilateral treaties http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=24
- EU legislation http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=25
The Annual Report of the Office
http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=9&idd2=92
Further information related to the topics referred to in the current ATR:
Industrial property
http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=2
Web page contains basic information which are useful for the applicant by filing the application of particular type of industrial property right, such as application forms, legislation, instructions of the IPO SR, information for applicant, administrative fees, contact to expert assistance, etc.:
Patents http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=14
SPC http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=20
Utility models http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=15
Designs http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=16
Topographies http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=17
Trademarks http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=18
Geographical indications http://www.upv.sk/index2.php?lang=en&idd=19
Design -related news regarding the Office
http://www.upv.sk/index.php?lang=en
Relations with mass media
The IPO SR continued in excellent cooperation with mass media for which the IP domain is no longer an issue of marginal interest. The total number of articles, TV spots and radio reports in the most significant mass media companies reached 80 in 2006.