eastmeetswest.european-patent-office.org - forum

East meets West in Vienna, 22 and 23 April 2010 - Join the discussion!

admin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:48:04 GMT

As in previous years, the EPO will organise its "East meets West" forum on Asian patent information in Vienna, Austria. This year, the forum will take place on 22 and 23 April 2010. (For more information on the forum, a preliminary programme and an archive with all presentations and reports from previous events, please go to the forum website at: http://www.epo.org/about-us/events/emw2010.html)

The following discussion threads are related to the discussion rounds which will take place on the second day of the forum on Friday, 23 April 2010. Participants and experts who will be present at the forum can use these discussion threads to exchange their ideas and questions prior to the event - and to follow up on these topics at a later stage. In addition, users of this virtual information exchange who will not be able to come to Vienna this year can join the discussion online.

We are looking forward to fruitful discussions, both online and at the "East meets West" forum in Vienna!

What industry needs

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:47:52 GMT

At last year's "East meets West" forum in Vienna, the PDG (Patent Documentation Group) met representatives of Asian patent offices and their related organisations to discuss the results of an analysis the PDG had done on the needs of European patent information users with respect to Asian patent information (for details, see the summary presented by Peter Kallas of BASF SE: http://www.epo.org/about-us/events/archive/2009/emw2009/programme.html)

This year's discussion round will continue the informal exchange between patent information users in Europe and representatives from patent offices in Asia. Picking up the threads of last year's meeting, the aim will be to identify the most pressing problems of European users and to find a collaborative way of setting priorities and working on solutions for the problems and challenges identified.

Working together to make Asian patent documentation work

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:43:23 GMT

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?

Common Hybrid Classification - what does it mean for searching Asian data?

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:40:57 GMT

Asian patent data has become a major part of the worldwide prior art documentation in the last couple of years. It is difficult to search Asian documentation with traditional tools and search strategies, and the IPC as we know it today may not always prove sufficient for effective searches in Asian data.

The five large patent offices of the world (the offices of the USA, Japan, China and Korea, plus the EPO) have agreed to start working on a common classification system based on the International Patent Classification (IPC). The proposed Common Hybrid Classification will select the best parts of the offices' existing classification schemes for a field-by-field introduction into the IPC, in order to give it the level of detail needed for searching large document collections. (For background information, see the discussion round report at the EPO's Patent Information Conference in Biarritz in 2009: http://www.epo.org/about-us/events/pi-conference/discussion-rounds.html)

Use the discussion round at "East meets West" this year, to see the Asian aspects of the Common Hybrid Classification project. This is your opportunity to discuss directly with experts from the EPO and Asian patent offices about how they feel that the Common Hybrid Classification scheme will improve the efficient retrieval of Asian patent data.

The new Chinese patent law in practice

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:36:41 GMT

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.

Cross-language searches: do they work yet?

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:33:54 GMT

With more than half of all new patent applications published in Japanese, Chinese or Korean, accessing and understanding prior art in Asian languages is a must for patent searchers worldwide. Machine translation (MT) has become almost a standard requirement for examiners at patent offices, searchers in industry and all those struggling with Asian patent documentation.

A promising new development is cross-language searching: an approach to provide dynamic translation of search statements, search in original language data and display the search results in the language of the search query.

But how mature and reliable is this technology? This discussion looks at the progress of research into cross-language search technologies and asks the question: do they work yet? What is the commercial database providers' approach? Which search engines currently offer cross-language search functions and what are users' experiences with those engines? And what are the predictions for the future?

Patent mapping (case study, green patents)

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:31:17 GMT

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?

The challenges of traditional knowledge

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:27:56 GMT

A frequent concern within the patent system is that traditional knowledge (TK) already known in the public domain should be fully recognised and adequately taken into consideration in the evaluation of novelty and inventive step by patent examiners.

In recent years, various efforts have been made to capture, digitise and improve access to traditional knowledge sources, including the TK Digital Library from India and the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) patent database. While TK data has become more widely available in prior art search collections, quite a few challenges remain when dealing with it.

Join this discussion round to hear EPO examiners' experiences with TK and to share your viewpoints and concerns.

(For further background information, please see the presentations at last year's "East meets West" forum: http://www.epo.org/about-us/events/archive/2009/emw2009/programme.html)

Legal status from Asia: what is still missing?

admin — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:19:02 GMT

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?

East meets West in Vienna, 23 and 24 April 2009

admin — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:20:10 GMT

The EPO's 7th annual "East meets West in Vienna" forum on patent information from Asia was held on 23 and 24 April 2009. This year, the hot topics included machine translation for Asian documents, searching traditional knowledge, recent law changes and classification matters. You can read more about the event in the EPO's "Patent Information News", issue 2/2009, which will be available soon at http://www.epo.org/about-us/publications/patent-information/news/2009.html

How relevant was the forum for your daily work? Which topics would you like to have discussed next year? Join this discussion thread to share your impressions of "East meets West 2009" or make suggestions for next year's event.

What is the fees for filing divisional application in india?

riya — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:59:02 GMT

What is the fees for filing divisional application in india?

The future of Asian patent documentation: more countries, more challenges?

admin — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:00:17 GMT

The latest statistics from WIPO show that the hubs for worldwide innovation have shifted: China, Japan and Korea are all among the top five biggest patenting nations; more than 50% of new patent publications worldwide appear in Chinese, Japanese or Korean. This means that Asian data represents a major part of worldwide prior art documentation and that patent information users have to meet the challenge of retrieving this documentation effectively and efficiently. How are users coping with a plurality of number formats, varying publication stages, different document types and kind codes? How are patent offices and database producers dealing with ever-growing patent data collections. Are there ways of collaborating on standardising and simplifying patent documentation to make life easier for patent information users and data producers alike?

This discussion round will ask participants what challenges they face when working with Asian patent documentation and what hurdles they have to overcome. The aim will be to identify ways of simplifying the use of Asian patent documents for patent searchers and of retrieving these documents more efficiently.

Why does classification matter?

admin — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:58:19 GMT

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.

Asian patent systems in flux: recent changes in law

admin — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:55:57 GMT

In December 2008, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's highest legislative body, passed amendments to China's patent law. This third major revision of the Chinese patent law will enter into force in October 2009. Strengthening patent enforcement in China is one major aspect of the revision; other changes include the introduction of absolute novelty and a "confidentiality examination" by SIPO for inventions made in China. Japan and Korea have also seen a series of amendments to their patent laws in recent years. In Japan, the new law taking effect in 2009 foresees an extension of the time limit for filing appeals against refusal decisions and better protection for the licensee in the case of a non-exclusive licence. Korea recently passed a new law implementing several key changes directed at giving applicants more options and increased flexibility, particularly with respect to prosecution. Other countries in Asia have scheduled or already implemented amendments to their patent legislations.

What will be the effects of these Asian patent law changes for European industry? What are the potentials and challenges you face in the areas of filing and patent prosecution, enforcement and litigation in Asia? Join this discussion round to share your viewpoints and experiences with experts from all over the world.

Current research on machine translation and patent searching in multi-lingual environments

admin — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 09:53:05 GMT

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?