Survey of the 1997, 1998 and 1999 Annual Technical Reports on industrial design information activities
The activities of some 50 intellectual property offices world-wide in the field of industrial design information are summarised for the period 19971999. The summary is presented under eight standard headings, as far as relevant, for each country. Activity varies enormously from just a handful of applications through to the UK (over 9K in 1999), USA (nearly 18K), Japan (over 37K), and Germany (just over 89K); the numbers are increasing steadily in most countries. The Locarno Classification (LC) is the preferred retrieval aid. The author concludes that only slow progress on automation and electronic delivery of industrial design information has been achieved so far.
annual technical reports industrial design information locarno classification official gazettes digitised search systems