Informative and Educational Activities of the Industrial Property Office Services for Public, Czech Republic

The Informative and Educational Activities

of the Industrial Property Office Services for Public

What services are provided by the Office ?

Lending of patent literature

Searches

Monitoring the state of the art for selected areas of technology

The services provided via the internet

Educational and publishing activities

How to order services ?

Where can you find more information ?

Industrial Property Office

Industrial Property Office

Antonína Čermáka 2a

160 68 Praha 6 - Bubeneč

phone: +420 220 383 xxx (direct dialing)

+420 220 383 111 (switchboard)

+420 220 383 121 Information Centre

fax: +420 224 324 718

e-mail: objednavky@upv.cz

posta@upv.cz

helpdesk@upv.cz

studovna@upv.cz

Internet: http://www.upv.cz

Reading Room and Inventions, Utility Models and Industrial Designs Information Centre is open to the public:

Monday 8.00 - 17.00

Tuesday 8.00 - 16.00

Wednesday 8.00 - 17.00

Thursday 8.00 - 16.00

Friday 8.00 - 14.30

Trade Mark Information Centre is open to the public:

Monday 8.00 - 12.00 13.00 - 17.00

Tuesday 8.00 - 12.00 13.00 - 16.00

Wednesday 8.00 - 12.00 13.00 - 17.00

Thursday 8.00 - 12.00 13.00 - 16.00

Friday 8.00 - 12.30 13.00 - 14.30

The patent attorneys and lawyers:

The patent attorneys and lawyers provide the professional help on industrial property matters for natural and legal persons.

They provide not only the professional advice, act for you when making an application, file it and represent you before the Industrial Property Office.

Contacts:

Chamber of Patent Attorneys of the Czech Republic Czech Bar Association

Gorkého 12 Národní třída16

602 00 Brno 110 00 Praha 1

tel./fax: 541 248 246 tel.: 224 947 307

e-mail: kpz@patent-agents.cz fax: 224 946 724

http://www.patent-agents.cz/ http://www.cak.cz

11/2005

The informative and educational activities of the industrial property office

The Industrial Property Office‘s main function is that of the national patent and trademark office which ensures the effective protection of the results of various technical creative activities (in the form of the issuance of patents and the registration of utility designs) and the legal safeguarding of the subjects of industrial designs (in the form of the registration of industrial designs) and the rights to labelling (in the form of the registration of trademarks, the labelling of origin and geographical labelling). As a public administration body, the Office is the coordinator of the international treaties protecting industrial property, to which the Czech Republic is bound. The Office‘s activities also include the securing of the development of industrial property protection and the functions of a specialised information centre.

The Office is one of the regional centres for patent information in the Czech Republic. The basic provided services include loans of patent literature, the realisation of searches and the monitoring of the state of the art in selected areas of technology. A large amount of information and services is provided via the internet.

The Office is involved in systematically building and making available a fund of international and national patent literature. At present, it has over 30 million original patent documents available from 26 countries in the world, including documents which have been issued upon the basis of the European Patent Convention and the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). The public reading room has both classic (paper, microfiche and microfilm) and electronic (CD-ROM and DVD) forms of the documents available. There is also the option of on-line access to a number of international database centres and their databases (for example, STN, Dialog and Questel).

The basic information services are provided free of charge. Fees are charged for services associated with any special costs which the Office has to outlay in order to provide them (for example, access to international database centres), for the use of the Office‘s search specialists or for photocopying.

1. Loans of presentation patent literature

Presentation loans constitute one of the public reading room‘s fundamental services. When visiting the reading room in person, interested parties may borrow patent literature, especially full descriptions or the title pages of nationally and internationally issued patents, published patent applications, registered utility and industrial designs and other accompanying literature such as patent and trademark bulletins, classification numbers and so on. The loan system is based on the systematic arrangement of the individual files containing the titles of protection in an archive according to the International Patent Classification system. The documents from less frequented states are kept in numbered files. An important source of industrial property information is also the non-patent technical literature which includes specialist periodicals, monographs and dictionaries.

2. Searches

Patent and trademark searches are among those services which are most sought after by the public. The Office‘s professional searchers work with the classic archive of patent documents, patent databases on CD-ROM or with on-line databases in database centres. A further significant source for the processing of searches is the internet which includes some freely accessible databases.

The Office‘s reading room offers access to the national document database which contains all of the applications for inventions, utility designs and industrial designs. It is possible to issue searches for specific document numbers in this system, as well as searches according to the name of the originator, the applicant or other criteria (for example, expressions from the document name or the International Patent Classifications). Trademark searches are undertaken in the national trademark system which includes all of the trademarks registered at the Office and in the ROMARIN database which contains all of the trademarks registered at the World Industrial Property Organisation (WIPO) in Geneva according to the Madrid Agreement. Searches can also be undertaken according to the textual wording, the trademark representation or all of the bibliographical data, including the International Classification of the Figurative Elements (the Vienna Agreement) and the International Classification of Products and Services (the Nice Agreement). Information searches can also be made using the internet, for example in the national trademark database. Further interesting internet sources include the Madrid Express database which can be accessed from the WIPO website or the CTM Online database of community trademarks which can be accessed from OHIM.

The following searches can be ordered:

a) Document legal status searches - these searches answer any questions as to whether a document remains valid or whether its validity has ended.

b) Patent family searches - this involves searches for patent documentation files concerning the same invention, applicant and author in various countries.

c) Name searches - this involves searches for the documents of a selected author or applicant/owner of industrial rights.

d) State of the art searches - these searches ascertain the state of the art in a specific area of interest. They are especially important prior to the submission of an application, the commencement of research, the purchasing of a license or the implementation of new production programs.

e) Searches for textual, figurative and combined trademarks - Amongst other things, the Office undertakes searches for lapsed trademarks, trademarks which are not part of the trademark database and the history of lapsed trademarks for the territory of the Czech Republic. It is further possible to process searches for the wording of a trademark and the owner of a trademark outside the territory of the Czech Republic, for example in the states of the European Union, the USA, Canada and so on.

f) Searches for the external appearance of a product - this involves searches for industrial designs which contain a representation of the given design and they are undertaken in the national industrial design database with the bibliographic data or (in the case of thematic searches) in the bulletins and the national archive documents. The searches are undertaken according to the document numbers, the International Industrial Design Classifications (the Locarno Agreement) and the name of the author and the owner of the industrial design. The internal industrial designs registered according to the Haag Agreement are ascertained from the DMI on-line database, while the community industrial designs are verified in the OHIM databases and bulletins.

The processing of the searches usually takes 1 to 4 weeks depending on the degree of difficulty involved. The Office offers express processing for some types of searches for a fee.

3. Copying

The copies of the patents and the other materials necessary for the search and study activities are realised while you wait. Users also have the option of ordering copies by telephone or by email (objednavky@upv.cz or studovna@upv.cz). The order must include the number of the document and, if possible, the main classification according to the International Patent Classification system.

4. Monitoring the state of the art for selected areas of technology

If a user is interested in the regular monitoring of the state of the art in a certain area, the Office‘s services include the regular sending of any appropriate newly published patents or the specific parts thereof to the user in question. This service is undertaken upon the basis of a written order in which the user must define the International Patent Classification, the territorial and temporal scope and the required output. The output may include the title page, the patent claims, the drawings, any combination of this information or the complete description of the invention.

5. The services provided via the internet

The Office‘s website at www.upv.cz provides information about the Office‘s activities, the individual subjects of industrial property, the provision of services, the legal regulations and the activities of the Institute for the Protection of Industrial Property. The web presentation also includes the application forms.

The Office‘s Bulletin is published on the internet starting from edition no. 1/2000. In order to simplify the orientation in the area of the classification of the subjects of the industrial protection, the appropriate classification systems (the International Patent Classification system, the Locarno Classifications for Industrial Designs, the Nice Classifications for Products and Services and the Vienna Classifications for the Figurative Elements of Trademarks) have been introduced in the internet. Users may undertake free information searches in the search database of national trademark database according to the application number, the text of the trademark, the number of the entry, the product and service classes, the figurative classes, the owner/ applicant, the date of submission, the right of priority, the date of publication and the date of registration. The record consists of the basic bibliographic data or the representation of the trademark. The database is updated daily, while the representations of the trademarks are added to the system within three days of the day of the submission of the given application.

A national database of patents and utility designs has also been brought into operation and it contains the Czech applications for inventions which have been published since 1991, the issued patents and the registered utility designs. The search query can be defined by means of a simple search mask, for example according to words from the title, the name of the author or the owner/applicant, the International Patent Classification, etc. The bibliographical records also include annotations or figures and the chemical formulae.

The final database to be brought into operation was the industrial design database. It is possible to undertake searches using not only the words from the name of the industrial design, but also according to the classes in the Locarno classification system. The record includes the representation of the industrial designs.

A number of international patent offices are creating national industrial property information databases and are making them available on the internet. In order to simplify the access to these free search resources, references to these databases of patents, trademarks and industrial designs have been added to the Office‘s website, both for selected individual countries and for international organisations.

The Office‘s website includes order forms for the Patent Information Department and the Industrial Property Training Institute. These pdf forms may be used to order patent searches, searches for industrial designs and trademarks, the Office Bulletin or the publications of the Industrial Property Training Institute and they may then be sent by fax, by post or by email.

All suggestions and comments may be sent in electronic format to

posta@upv.cz .

6. Educational activities

Specialised correspondence studies

The Office includes the Industrial Property Training Institute which is an educational and a publishing organisation. The Institute offers the possibility of studying industrial property protection in a regular course lasting two years (two-day training sessions which take place once a month). The course ends with the defence of a specialist dissertation and an oral final examination. The course includes training in patent law, patent information and searches, labelling rights in connection with the associated problem area and so on. Graduates may apply their gained knowledge when working at patent centres and in the offices of patent agents. The course represents suitable preparation for undertaking the profession of a patent agent, which of course also requires the passing of a further examination and the fulfilment of the other conditions set out by law for the performance of the activities of a patent agent. Graduates of the course are also well equipped to work as searchers and documentarists. The course, which accepts graduates with secondary and university educations, always begins in September of the current year.

Innovative studies

The Institute also organises so-called innovative studies which are mainly designated for the graduates of the specialised course, but also for other interested individuals from the ranks of the specialist public. These courses take place in the form of singleday topically oriented seminars which monitor the current developments in the area of industrial property.

Short courses and training sessions

The Institute offers a range of short courses and training sessions designated for the wider public according to current needs. If requested, it is possible to organise specialist seminars at secondary schools and universities or via educational agencies.

7. Publication activities

The Institute also undertakes publishing and editing activities. The issued publications are mainly designated for the needs of the individuals attending the specialised course and the other courses, but also for the specialist public. The Institute further organises the publishing of the „Industrial Property“ specialist magazine and other promotional materials, including monothematic information brochures concerning technical solutions (patents, utility designs), industrial designs and trademarks.

All of the publications may be ordered by post, by fax or by email or they can be purchased without an order at the Office‘s reading room. The promotional and informative material is available free of charge, for example, in the Office‘s entrance hall or at the information centre.

8. Participation at exhibitions and trade fairs

The Office regularly participates at the important exhibitions and trade fairs both at home (the International Engineering Trade Fair and INVEX) and abroad and it uses these opportunities to inform the public of its activities and to promote the significance of industrial property for business success. Interested individuals are provided with consultations and information searches.

9. PRECES

(Patents from the region of eastern and central european states)

The database of patent documentation on the ESPACE-PRECES CD-ROM is a joint data product from 8 countries of Central and Eastern Europe (the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Rumania, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Latvia). The documentary basis of the disk consists of numerically categorised facsimiles of the full texts of the patent files from the participating patent offices. The documents are in the original languages. All of the bibliographic data, as well as the words from the summaries, are indexed, coded and included into dictionaries. During searches, it is possible to combine individual search expressions and aspects using the logical operators AND, OR and NOT. The user interface is available in English, Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Rumanian.

10. TRACES

(Trademarks from the region of eastern and central european states)

The TRACES CD-ROM database of trademarks contains bibliographic data and representations of the registered national trademarks of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Rumania), but it does not contain data on the trademarks filed according to the Madrid Agreement or the Madrid Protocol.

The trademark records include the country code, the, bibliographical data (the registration number, the date of registration, the period of the duration of the protection, the expiry date for the protection, the full text of the trademark, the applicant‘s name, the owner‘s name, the legal representative‘s name, the application number, the application date, the type of trademark, the list of products and services in the national languages and the Nice and Vienna Classifications, if stated) or the representation of the trademark.

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