Survey on the Implementation and Promotion of WIPO Standard ST.22

Response submitted by Japan in 2011

The present questionnaire addresses issues concerning WIPO Standard ST.22 (Recommendation for the authoring of patent applications for the purpose of facilitating optical character recognition (OCR)) and patent applications submitted on paper or submitted electronically (e-filed) but having the text body of the application submitted in image form (e.g., PDF or TIFF images). Even if your Office does not perform OCR on its documents, please respond to the questions which are applicable.

A revised version of WIPO Standard ST.22 was adopted by the Standards and Documentation Working Group (SDWG) on November 21, 2008. It is available at: https://www.wipo.int/standards/en/pdf/03-22-01.pdf

The results of the survey will be presented for consideration by the Committee on WIPO Standards (CWS).

Please take note that some questions might not be displayed depending on the response(s) to preceding question(s). This could cause gaps in numbering of displayed questions and sections.

Section 1: Patent filing in your Office

1. Does your Office accept patent applications submitted on paper or submitted electronically but having the text body of the application submitted in image form (e.g., PDF or TIFF images)?

Yes

Please comment if necessary:

The JPO does not accept patent applications submitted electronically but having the text body of the application submitted in image form. But accepts the drawing itself including the table content and mathematical and chemical formulae as an image data.

2. If applicable, please indicate the percentage, with respect to the total number of applications received by your Office, and the year of reference (e.g., 60% in 2008), of the following

3. Does your Office perform optical character recognition (OCR) on patent applications?

No

Please comment if necessary:

As the JPO consigns the OCR process to the registered data processing organizations by statute, the JPO itself does not perform OCR process.

Section 2: Promotion and use of WIPO Standard ST.22

4. Has your Office adapted the filing guidance that it provides to applicants to take into account the recommendations of the revised version of WIPO Standard ST.22?

No

5. Has your Office promoted the use by applicants of the recommendations provided by WIPO Standard ST.22?

No

6. If applicable, what publication means has your Office used to promote the use of WIPO Standard ST.22 (e.g., article in the official gazette, amendment of Office's filing recommendations, publication on the Office's website, newsletters)?

Please specify the details (e.g., entry or section of the official gazette, URL of the location where the announcement is available):

Not applicable

7. Has your Office promoted WIPO Standard ST.22 in any other way (e.g., conferences, information circulars)?

No

Section 4: OCR practices of IPOs

15. Does your Office have in-house quality checking measures in place to control the quality of the OCRed patent documents?

No

16. Does your Office OCR patent documents in foreign languages?

No

17. Does your Office outsource the OCR of patent documents?

Yes

At what stage(s) of the procedure does your Office forward the patent documents to the external contractor?

When the JPO receives the patent application submitted on paper.

18. If you answered"Yes" to the previous Question:

(a) If applicable, please indicate any comments or feedback that your Office might have received from the contractor about the recommendations of WIPO Standard ST.22:

Not applicable

(b) Please also describe the quality checking measures used to control the quality of the OCRed patent documents that are performed by your contractor:

The JPO secures high accuracy by proofreading through visual inspection after the OCR process.

(c) Since your answer to Questions 4, 8 or 13 was"Yes", please indicate whether your Office has renegotiated, or intends to renegotiate, the service contract with its contractor as a consequence of the adoption of the revised version of WIPO Standard ST.22 by the Standards and Documentation Working Group (SDWG) on November 21, 2008:

Section 5: Software and hardware used to OCR

19. What software tools does your Office, or its contractor, use to perform the OCR of patent documents?

The JPO uses commercially available software.

20. Has your Office, or its contractor, developed OCR software extensions specific to patent documents?

Yes

Please provide a concise description of the specific features:

The software of Q19 answer is customized user-friendly.

21. What hardware does your Office, or its contractor, use to perform the OCR of patent documents?

WindowsＰＣ　

Section 6: Workflow

22. Please describe the workflow for the OCR of your patent documents:

Filed application documents are converted into image data via scanner and into text data via OCR software.

23. Does your Office itself check the quality of its OCRed patent documents?

No

24. Please describe how your Office handles patent documents found to be defective later in the process (e.g., after publication):

The JPO works on modification, pursuant to the act.

25. Please provide a concise response to the following issues concerning the storage of OCRed patent documents:

(a) Format(s) in which your Office stores the OCRed patent documents:

XML format in conformity with ST.36

(b) Does the storage format(s) used by your Office allow for later quality improvements either by your Office or by external contractors?

Yes

Please comment if necessary:

The JPO storage format allows for quality improvement at later stages, if the question means later modification and correction.

(c) Does the storage format used by your Office allow for quick identification of patent documents with OCR defects?

No

Please comment if necessary:

Computerization process and other processes including manual inspection enable preventing the generation of defective patent documents.

(d) Does the storage format used by your Office allow for different renditions to view or exchange the OCRed patent documents (e.g., PDF, HTML)?

Yes

(e) Does the storage format used by your Office retain all the raw detailed information obtained from the OCR process (e.g., individual character accuracy estimation, position in image, etc.)?

No

(f) Does the storage format used by your Office capture, in text format, table contents, and mathematical and chemical formulae?

No, it does not.

26. Is the OCR of patent documents also used to increase the efficiency of the work of the Office, (e.g., bibliographic data input from paper applications can be considerably speeded up with accurate OCR)?

Yes

Please provide a concise description of specific features indicating how the efficiency is increased:

27. Does your Office OCR documents other than patent documents?

No

28. If it is known by your Office, please provide a description of the usages by your customers of the documents OCRed by your Office (e.g., internal office patent application searches by examiners, Internet patent application searches by the public, electronic products sold to private subscribers, etc.):

We describe our customers' usage as internal office patent application searches by examiners and Internet patent application searches by the public, etc, then, those OCRed documents are treated as the same as electronically filed documents.

29. Does your Office use OCRed patent documents provided by other offices?

Yes

Please indicate from which office(s) and for which documents, formats and purposes:

When we receive patent documents from other Offices, we do not confirm whether those are OCR processed. Whether or not OCRed, we utilize those patent documents submitted by other Offices.

Section 7: Additional comments

30. Please provide further comments regarding the implementation and promotion of WIPO Standard ST.22, as well as OCR practices of your Office, if you feel it is necessary:

No other comment

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