eastmeetswest.european-patent-office.org - forum

Extract East asian characters from PCT application

Roch — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:28:40 GMT

Hello,

I am searching a tool to extract all the two-bytes encoded characters from a PCT in .pdf format. With such an extraction tool it would be possible to machine translate these applications before their national phases. Does anyone has some good sources to share?

I know this subject is not related to EPO but I think this forum is a good place to share those information.

East meets West in Vienna, 17 and 18 April 2008

admin — Mon, 05 May 2008 09:37:17 GMT

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.

Annual fees in Asian countries

Roch — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 12:50:13 GMT

Every country has its own fees system. What are the main differences between Japan, Korea, China, and Hong-kong? Is it possible for a patent assignee to pay only when the patent is granted and every year after? Did the corresponding's laws changed in the last twenty years. Any expert is welcome to answer these hard questions!

Enforcement, litigation and licensing in China

admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:47:21 GMT

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.

F-terms at the JPO and the EPO

admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:45:34 GMT

The F-terms classification system is the most important search tool at the JPO. A classifications expert from the JPO will demonstrate how F-terms are used by JPO examiners. The EPO has its own classification system ECLA. In certain technical fields, the EPO’s examiners use F-terms in addition to ECLA. An EPO examiner will show a comparison search using ECLA and F-terms. Using search examples from patent examiners’ daily work, this discussion will focus on the benefits of the F-terms system.

What are your experiences with the F-terms classification system? How and when can you employ F-terms efficiently in your own searches? Use this opportunity to get inspiration and discuss your open questions with experts from the JPO and the EPO.

How useful is machine translation in patent searching?

admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:44:29 GMT

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?

Improved patent search on SIPO's website

admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:43:17 GMT

In April 2007, Ms Que Dongping of SIPO introduced the "Experimental Platform of Patent Information Services" to participants at “East meets West in Vienna”. What are users’ experiences? How useful do you find the new search features? What is the status of the experimental platform today? This discussion highlights the latest developments of this and other official Chinese sources of patent information and gives an overview of SIPO's future plans.

What are your experiences with SIPO’s patent search facilities? Share your insights on Chinese patent searching or deposit your feedback for SIPO’s experts.

Patent mapping in East Asia - benchmark for Europe?

admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:41:32 GMT

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.

Searches with F-terms on commercial databases

admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:11:03 GMT

As F-terms become more readily available on various commercial databases, this discussion looks at efficient ways of incorporating F-terms into search strategies to make the most of this powerful and unique search tool. What are the practical uses of F-terms for patent information users in industry? How can F-terms help in locating relevant patent publications from Japan? And how sophisticated are the search possibilities with F-terms in western databases?

Share your experiences, discuss your open questions and find inspiration and practical tips for your own searches.

Cross-lingual patent retrieval: a viable approach to overcome the language barrier?

admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:09:29 GMT

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 challenge of legal status from East Asia?

admin — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:08:32 GMT

In April 2007, at the last "East meets West" forum, participants discussed their needs with experts from the patent offices in East Asia and deposited their priorities for legal status coverage. (For a documentation on the outcome of this discussion, click here: http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/B20BE67CCB185283C12572D800359801/$File/discussion_g_flipchart_protocol.pdf) A year on from this discussion, where do we stand? This discussion picks up on findings from last year's discussion round (http://documents.epo.org/projects/babylon/eponet.nsf/0/C96A0D223C0C038EC12572F7002ECBE4/$File/discussion_g_report.pdf) and tries to point out areas where legal status from East Asia remains a special challenge for Western patent searchers.

Share your experiences, post your questions or deposit your feedback for the experts from the patent offices in East Asia.

Japanese Patent Attorneys' Association (JPAA) posts FQA

GeorgeKapsalas — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 17:09:53 GMT

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

The procedure of a china patent application

ipsoon — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 07:02:47 GMT

The procedure of a china patent application Many investors want to apply for a china patent, but they are not familiar with the application procedure. Let’s show you in detail:⑴ Patent Application and Documents RequiredA china patent application requires the following documents:Each application for invention or utility model must include the following documents:
- Power of Attorney, signed by the applicant (Notarization or legalization is not required);
- Specification with claims and abstract;
- Drawings, if any (two sets of formal drawings);
- Certified copy of the prior application, if a priority is claimed;
- Assignment of priority right, if the applicant in China differs from that of the prior application. Each application for design must include the following documents：
- Power of Attorney, signed by the applicant (Notarization or legalization is not required);
- Drawings or photographs of the design, in triplicate;
- Certified copy of the prior application, if a priority is claimed;
- Assignment of priority right, if the applicant in China differs from that of the prior application. ⑵ Approval Procedures
Approval of patent for invention -- after the China Patent Office receives an application for a patent for invention and finds it to be in conformity with the requirements of the law upon preliminary examination, it will publish the application after 18 months from the date of filing. Upon the request of the applicant, the China Patent Office may publish the application earlier. Upon the request of the applicant for a patent for invention, made at any time within three years from the date of filing, the China Patent Office will proceed to examine the application as to substance. If without any justified reason, the applicant fails to meet the time limit for requesting examination as to substance, the application will be deemed to have been withdrawn. The China Patent Office may, on its own initiative, proceed to examine any application for a patent for invention as to substance when deemed necessary.

If no cause for rejection of the application for a patent for invention is found after examination as to substance, the China Patent Office will make a decision to grant the patent right for invention, issue the certificate of patent for invention, and register and publish it. The patent right for invention comes into effect on the date of the publication.

Approval of patent for utility model and design -- if no cause for rejection of the application for a patent for utility model or design is found after preliminary examination, the China Patent Office will make a decision to grant the patent right for utility model or the patent right for design, issue the relevant patent certificate, and register and publish it. The patent right for utility model or design comes into effect on the date of the publication. News from IPsoon Global Agency

Which topics would you like to discuss at "East meets West 2008"?

admin — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 08:51:35 GMT

"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.

East meets West in Vienna 2007

admin — Thu, 03 May 2007 12:42:58 GMT

The 5th Forum on patent information from East Asia took place in Vienna on 26 and 27 April 2007. With some 90 participants and 20 delegates from Japan, China and Korea, this year's forum was the most popular event so far. The hot topics were machine translation, Japanese F-terms, and legal status information. Other discussions circled around the retrieval of Chinese patent information, East Asian patent data on INPADOC and esp@cenet and the question of what a patent was actually worth.

What were the goals and concrete outcome of "East meets West 2007"? 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?

Share your experiences and impressions of "East meets West 2007", drop your feedback to the organisers or make suggestions for next year's event.