Comments on C. PCT 1517
Japan Intellectual Property Association

To improve the access to technical information provided by international
publications, we also believe that it is important to offer English text of the abstract andthe drawing selected. In view of the above, taking into account enhanced searching
functions and accompanying changes in the method of reference, as well as
development of machine translation techniques, improvement in systems and theirefficient operation should be considered.

Our comments on this are as follows, andyour consideration would be greatly appreciated.

International publications are searched under some circumstances. We will give
two examples: the first case is search for patent rights held by other companies related
to one's business; and the second case is search for prior art documents over which thepatentability of the invention for which an application is to be filed might be rejected.

In

the first case, what should be carefully studied is the claims of the patent which has
been actually granted in each country, and thus international publications are searched
as a clue to identification of a family that may be related to the business.

For thisreason, these publications are often only reviewed as a reference material.

In thesecond case, international publications disclosing art relevant to somewhere in the fulltext of an international publication are searched for.

In both cases, the abstracts ofinternational publications are mainly referred to for the purpose of narrowing relateddocuments.

Nowadays, however, IT systems have advanced search features andenable us to perform a full-text search for a predetermined string of text to select thetarget documents. Therefore, the number of cases where a searcher actually reads
the abstract of an international publication to determine whether or not the international
publication should be investigated in detail is decreasing.

In many cases, it issubstantially possible, by referring to the claims instead of the abstract, to determine
whether to review international publications in detail.
- 1 -Then, another opinion is that more efficient search would result from providing
international publications in machine readable or text searchable format than improving
the quality of the abstract.

To make the length of abstracts closer to the length recommended in PCT Rules
such as Rule 8.1(b) from the current state, it may be effective to introduce examples ofabstracts prepared with an appropriate length.

More desirably, introduction ofexamples of both good writing and bad writing for one case would be helpful for those
who draft abstracts to understand how they should be drafted.

Presently, PCT Rule 8.1(b) defines the number of words recommended in theabstract. It may be possible to change this recommendation to a requirement, but wedisagree with making such a requirement regardless of whether it is for abstracts written
in English or in other languages at the time of filing non-English applications. When it
is hypothesized that the requirement for length of English abstracts is made, applicants
who file non-English international applications will have to confirm the length of thetranslated abstract before international filing. We are afraid that such requirement might
eliminate one of the benefits of the PCT system for applicants who file international
applications in a non-English language which are that they can postpone the incursionof the translation costs until the national phase entry.

As a comment on the translation expense incurred in the International Bureau as
one of the backgrounds in paragraph 3 of PCT/WG/9/16, taking it into account that
abstracts are referred to merely as useful information and that the quality of machinetranslation has recently been increasing, there is opinion that the quality of machinetranslated abstract can be sufficient. We recognize that if machine translation effectively
reduces the costs, it is also worth considering to prepare an English abstract using
machine translation.

EOD- 2 -