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

Response submitted by Slovakia 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:

Both, on paper as well as submitted electronically but having the text body
of the application submitted in image form (e.g., PDF or TIFF images).

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?

Not now, but we intend to do so

Please specify when:

as of 2013

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?

Not now, but we intend to do so

Please specify when:

as of September 1, 2011

Please comment if necessary:

The Office has issued and made available to the public via web page and its filing room a filing guidance having provisions laid down in the ST.22, but not referring to the standard as such neither containing complete and exactly the same provisions of the standard. Please refer to the Instruction of the Industrial Property Office of the Slovak Republic defining uniform layout of the patent application, Part: General Provisions Governing the Presentation of Application Documents (for more details see http://www.upv.sk/?instruction-of-the-industrial-property-office-of-the-slovak-republic-defining-uniform-layout-of-the-patent-application ). The instruction is currently being updated in order to, and among others, provide the applicants to take into account the recommendations of the WIPO Standard ST.22. Supposing the time this questionnaire being analyzed by the WIPO, the new updated instruction with the ST.22 reference should already be issued and available for general public.

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

Not now, but we intend to do so

Please specify when:

as of September 1, 2011

Please comment if necessary:

Please see the comments to the question 4.

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):

Please see the comments to the question 4.

On the URL address of the Office's website http://www.upv.sk/?electronic-filing-of-applications please see also"RELATED LINKS"
• User days
• Meeting of on-line services users
• FAQ
• Helpdesk

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?

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

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

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:

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

(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?

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

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

Section 6: Workflow

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

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

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

The Office issues a corrected version of patent documents by using the ST.9 INID code (13) which is applied according to corresponding paragraph 10 of the WIPO Standard ST.16 for announcing a correction relating to bibliographic data on the first page and/or relating to any part of the patent document.

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:

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

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

(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)?

(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.)?

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

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)?

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

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.):

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

No

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:

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