Asian patent data represents a major part of worldwide prior art documentation and patent information users have to meet the challenge of retrieving this documentation effectively and efficiently.  At last year's "East meets West" forum in Vienna, users discussed what the main hurdles to the efficient use of Asian patent data were and proposed ways to overcome them. The most important issues mentioned were:

- standardisation of number formats and kind codes,

- access to original documents,

- dealing with applicants' and inventors' names, and

- timely data availability.

(For further details please refer to the discussion report at: http://www.epo.org/about-us/events/archive/2009/emw2009/programme.html) 

 

This year's discussion will look at the efforts that are currently being taken to deal with issues of standardisation, document access and efficient retrieval of Asian patent data. What are the main hurdles we still have to overcome? What are the most pressing priorities? How can documentation specialists at patent offices, the commercial sector and the patent information user community work together to meet the special challenges posed by Asian patent documentation?

The third major revision of the Chinese patent law entered into force in October 2009. Strengthening patent enforcement in China was one major aspect of the revision; other changes included the introduction of absolute novelty and a "confidentiality examination" by SIPO for inventions made in China.  

Some six months after the entry into force, what are patent practitioners experiences with the new Chinese patent law? What effects on filing, patent prosecution and enforcement can be observed? How are patent applicants in China and abroad reacting to the changes? What impacts have there been on patenting behaviour?  

Join this discussion round to hear from experts and to share your viewpoints and experiences.

The visualisation of patent statistics enables businesses and policy makers to use patent information for decision-making. Patent maps can be strategic tools not only for policy makers or big industry, but also for SMEs.

 The Japanese Patent Office has been providing patent maps for key areas of technologies to the user community in Japan since the late 1960s. Korea also places a strong focus on patent analysis and technology evaluation.  

This discussion round will use the example of "green patents", i.e. patents in the field of environmentally sound technologies, to take a closer look at the question how patent mapping and statistical analysis can help identify trends. How useful are patent statistics for identifying trends in new technologies like clean energy? Can patent mapping help discover changes in R&D activities? What can European users learn from the Asian example?

Availability, quality and completeness of legal status data from Asia have been major concerns for patent information users. In 2009, users sat together with representatives from the EPO and from Asian patent offices and discussed which legal status events were most urgently needed and which countries were of highest interest for searchers in industry. Amongst the most important users' wishes were:

- improved legal status coverage of Asian countries in English,

- standardised legal status codes, and

- a central source of legal status information.

For further details, please refer to the report of last year's discussion round: http://www.epo.org/about-us/events/archive/2009/emw2009/programme.html. 

This year's discussion round will look at improvements and progress achieved since last year. It will also provide an opportunity for users to pick up the issues and deepen the discussion on specific priorities with respect to Asian legal status. How can we progress from just analysing the deficiencies in the information to more pro-active and dynamic solutions? Are there opportunities for work-arounds and how should the roles be shared within the triangle of diverging priorities among patent offices, database providers and the user community?

What is the fees for filing divisional application in india?

Why do we still need classification when so much documentation is now searchable in full-text or at least abstract form? How is it possible to search effectively with so many different classification schemes around? What are the problems associated with a common classification scheme and how can they be avoided? Will the IP5 proposed Common Hybrid Classification Scheme help or hinder matters? How useful and reliable are Japanese F-terms in focusing a search? Will the other big Asian patent offices apply deep-indexing schemes similar to the F-terms to their documentation to facilitate the search process? 

These are some of the questions that we will tackle in the discussion round. Why - because the growth in Asian documentation in the last couple of years means that the region cannot be ignored and the only sure way to retrieve relevant documentation for a non-native speaker (and often for native speakers) is via the available classification.

With more than half of all new patent applications published in Japanese, Chinese or Korean, patent searchers are confronted with the necessity of efficiently locating and accessing prior art in Asian languages. Machine translation (MT) has become the buzz word for examiners at patent offices, searchers in industry and all those struggling with Asian patent documentation. While the preferred option might be to convert all patent documents to a common language and search in one language only, an alternative approach is to provide dynamic translation of search statements, search in original language data and display the search results in the language of the search query. "Document translation" versus "query translation": which school of thought will prevail and in which direction are patent database providers heading? 

This discussion looks at the progress of research into MT technologies and lessons to be learnt for patent searching. What is the current approach of the major patent offices? How are commercial database providers dealing with the language problem? And what are the predictions for the future?

Availability, quality and completeness of legal status data from Asia have been major concerns for patent information users. At the same time, users have been requesting a central resource for quick and reliable legal status information. Over the last few years, SIPO, KIPO and the JPO have all improved the availability of English legal status information in their free services. In INPADOC, the coverage of Asian legal status data has recently been enhanced through the addition of legal status codes for Chinese documents, and the upload of legal status data from China is expected to start soon.

This discussion round will provide the opportunity for users to discuss their expectations and needs with respect to legal status information from Asia.  Which are the most important legal status events that should be included in a central legal status resource? Is there a way of standardising or harmonising legal status entries in view of better usability? What are your experiences, particular needs and suggestions for improvement? Where would you put the priorities for the extension or improvement of the existing data coverage?

With well over 130 participants, the EPO's 6th Forum on patent information from East Asia was the most popular event so far. The main themes included machine translation and cross-lingual patent retrieval, improved ways of searching Asian patent data, patent enforcement in China, Japanese FI/F-terms and patent mapping in East Asia.

What were the goals and concrete outcome of "East meets West 2008"? How relevant was the forum for the daily work of those who participated? What did the experts from Asia think? And which topics would you like to see at next year's forum?

Join this discussion thread to share your impressions of "East meets West in Vienna", or make suggestions for next year's event.

Currently, the third revision of the Chinese patent law is under way, and is expected to enter into force in 2008. Strengthening patent enforcement in China is one major aspect of the revision. This discussion looks at the practical issues of patenting in China, focussing especially on enforcement, litigation and licensing.  

What are the challenges you are facing in your patenting activities in China? What hurdles do you have to overcome to enforce your patents successfully? Exchange your experiences, get practical tips and benefit from the expertise of a legal expert and patent attorney.

Currently, more than half of all new patent applications published in the world are written in Japanese, Chinese or Korean. Machine translation has become the buzz word for those struggling with Asian patent documentation. How advanced is machine translation technology in an Asian language context? In a patent context? How useful are automated translation tools for patent searchers? This discussion looks at the achievements and limitations of machine translation technology and tries to forecast future developments in this area.

What are your experiences with automated translation tools? How useful are existing tools for your daily work? What are your expectations for the future of machine translation?

Since the late 1960s, the Japanese Patent Office has been providing “patent maps” for key areas of technologies to the user community in Japan. Created mainly to promote technology transfer and support licensing activities, such patent maps can help identify trends, illustrate the maturity of technologies or discover changes in R&D activities. Patent maps can be strategic tools not only for policy makers or big industry, but also for SMEs. Korea also places a strong focus on patent analysis and technology evaluation and offers various expert services in this field. How useful are patent statistics for European users? What can we learn from the Asian example?

Are you using statistical or visualisation tools in your work? What are your experiences? Learn more about patent mapping from the experts from East Asia. Share your expectations for patent mapping in Europe with the EPO’s expert.

In an increasingly global environment, patent searchers are faced with the necessity of locating and accessing prior art in a wide variety of languages. While Japanese has long been an important language in patent documentation, lately there has also been a dramatic explosion of prior art documentation from China and Korea. How are patent information users going to tackle this language challenge? While the preferred option might be to convert all patent documents to a common language and search in one language only, an alternative approach is to provide dynamic translation of search statements, search in original language data and display the search results in the language of the search query. This discussion looks at the viability of such a “cross-lingual patent retrieval” approach. What is the status of cross-lingual retrieval technologies? How satisfactory are the results? What are the problems in cross-lingual retrieval? And what are the projections for the future? 

Are you currently employing cross-lingual retrieval tools in your searches? What are your experiences? What improvements would there need to be in order to make cross-lingual retrieval a useful search tool?

The JPAA recently published Questions and Answers regarding patent practice in Japan.  The available download may be found at  http://www.jpaa.or.jp/english/index.html  . Either the entire document, or a Table of Contents may be downloaded from this JPAA website.

 

submitted by: 

George Kapsalas
Registered Patent Agent - European Patent Attorney Candidate
Patentburo Paul Rosenich AG

"East meets West 2008" (http://www.epo.org/about-us/events/emw2008.html) will take place on 17 and 18 April 2008. This annual forum is an opportunity for discussions of day-to-day problems and questions in small groups. Which topics are important for your work? Which search challenges and which documentation problems would you like to see addressed in the discussions? Let us know your suggestions, so that we can prepare a programme for "East meets West 2008" that really gets to the heart of the issues that matter.

This discussion looks at some of the special features of the patent systems in East Asia, requirements for filing, and at the challenges for western companies preparing to file patent applications in Japan, China and Korea. 

Discuss your observations and experiences, seek advice or share your tips and recommendations.

A commercial machine translation tool has been available on the KIPRIS database (Korea Industrial Property Information Service) since early 2007. This discussion looks at how machine translation and a variety of other improvements to the KIPRIS database help users exploit Korean patent information more fully.

Share your experiences on Korean-to-English machine translation, give feedback to the KIPRIS database providers, or post your comments and suggestions.

More than 50% of the world's patent applications are written in Japanese, Chinese or Korean. The western searcher faces the challenge of interpreting and evaluating this important part of worldwide patent documentation correctly. How useful are automated translation tools? Can costly manual translations be avoided? Is machine translation the answer to all our problems?

Share your experiences on existing machine translation tools, give feedback on the usefulness of translation engines provided by patent offices or post your suggestions for improvement.