Survey of the annual technical reports on the industrial property information activities of IP offices in the year 2001
The activities in the year 2001 of some 46 intellectual property offices and organizations worldwide in the field of patent, trademark and industrial design information are summarized, based on the Annual Technical Reports (ATRs) provided by those offices and organizations. The summary for each country commences with filing statistics, followed by the most relevant, new features of their information activities. Both the filing and information activities vary enormously. The author concludes, inter alia, that In most industrialised countries as well as some of the emerging countries, the number of IP rights applications continued to increase. The granting/registration procedures have not kept up in many IP Offices with this increased number of applications. Work on systems permitting electronic filing of applications, correspondence and fee payment is continuing at a great pace. CD-ROM, DVD and the Internet are now the major vectors for disseminating IP information. The value of the ATRs, and their chronological and geographical comparisons, is increasingly limited by the absence of many ATRs each year and the repetition of information already provided in previous ATRs.
annual technical reports industrial design information electronic filing dvd patent information trademark information application filing trends international patent classification ipc official gazettes electronic search systems cd-rom information dissemination training courses