e-PEC – Electronic Platform for Collaborative Examination

INPI (Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial)

VIII LATIPAT Reunion - 05 to 07 November 2012

Index

Introduction Objectives Premises Functionalities Workflow Results Conclusions Next steps

Introduction

PROSUR A South-South cooperation project Integration and cooperation project involving south american countriesArgentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuator, Paraguay, Peru,

Surinam and Uruguay

Main objective is the effective operational cooperation among the governmental industrial property offices in the region, with support from the Fund for Regional Public Goods (BPR) of the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB)

Introduction

PROSUR Main deliverables

Implementation and development of a common electronic platform IP offices database integration Common portal Administrative and financial sustainability of the project, including

its institutionalization

Project structure Directive Committee Technical Committee Manager Executive secretary Technical consultants

Introduction

e-PEC

Electronic Platform for Collaborative Examination

http://epec.inpi.gov.br

Introduction

Growing worldwide increase in number and complexity of patent applications

Backlog Decreasing analysis quality

Intellectual property offices groups IP5 – EPO, USPTO, JPO, CIPO and KIPO Vancouver Group – UKIPO, IPAustralia, CIPO PROSUR – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuator, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam and e Uruguay Asian Group

Introduction

Work share based on Legislation harmonization

Changes in legislation Long term solution

Simple reuse of work Higher benefits for the less efficient No sinergy among the offices

Objectives

Electronic Platform for Collaborative Examination Sinergy in examination Synchronous and real-time Possibility of reuse of part or total work already done

Purely technical analysis based on the worldwide concepts already established

Respect to the final decision of each office

Premises

All information is public to system users Patent applications data, technical reports, logs, comments

System information of a given IP office is read-only for other IP offices users

Centralized access to update documents through access to IP offices systems

Grant access to public data for the society

Functionalities

Multilingual system

IP offices register

Users linked to IP offices

Perform patent application collaborative examination

Patent examiners from the same office Patent examiners from different offices

Functionalities

First search based on patent application or priority number through EPO OPS (Open Patent Service) webservice

Retrieval of all patent applications of the family (only for offices registered into the system)

Functionalities

Presentation of the patent application and its family

Functionalities

Visualization and edition of the bibliographic data of a patent application

Functionalities

Insert a new technical report

Functionalities

Insert a new technical report

Copy a technical report related to another patent application of the same family

Functionalities

Insert a new technical report

Copy a technical report related to another patent application of the same family

Associate a patent application to a report of another patent application of the same family

Functionalities

Perform a simplified examination (simple technical report)

Functionalities

Perform a more complex examination (detailed technical report)

Functionalities

Automatic generation of a ODF format document with all content of the technical report

Functionalities

Centralized access to PROSUR patent office systems

Functionalities

Centralized access to public and global patent application systems

Functionalities

Forum

Functionalities

On-line users tracking

Functionalities

Message tool

Functionalities

Action logs - Family, patent applications and technical reports

Functionalities

Family, patent applications and technical report publication

Functionalities

Statistics

Functionalities

Access as visitor

Visualization of all public families, patent applications and technical reports

Workflow

Flexible workflow, allowing multiple sinchronous or assinchronous interactions

Starts with family retrieval Ends with family publication

Allows several intermediate collaborative steps to enhance the technical report

Each IP office will have a “collaborative queue” of patent applications for collaborative examination

Brazil will only perform examination through e-PEC

Workflow

1 – Retrieve patent application family

2 – Exam patent application

3 – Perform search

4 – Perform complementary search

5 – Write technical report

6 – Access other technical report

7 – Copy other technical report

8 – Change technical report

9 – Access forum

10 – Generate document with technical report

11 – Publish report

12 – Publish family

Results

Collaborative examination Sinergy in examination No need to change legislation

Enhance technical report quality Real-time, wide and effective discussion about the technology and access to update and wider range of documents

Get to faster decisions Higher quality of examination which leads to reduction in number of analysis steps

Results

Potencial strategic partnership with brazilian organizations

CNPq - http://www.cnpq.br/ Strenghtning of international strategical

partnerships PROSUR project Technical partnership beetween Brazil and Argentina Interest of other countries that are not part of PROSUR project

Transparency for the society

Results

All patent examiners from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuator, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay already registered into e-PEC platform

Stimulus to rigorous examination of patent applications for countries

Surinam (one user) South Africa (negotiation ongoing)

Conclusions

The synchronous and real-time examination methodology among intellectual property offices can help solving backlog and enhance quality of analysis

e-PEC platform can be used throughout the patent offices and research institutions worldwide for joint understanding of the technology claimed by patent applications

Next steps

Translation machine High fidelity for portuguese, spanish and english aiming the translation of technical reports Good fidelity to translate from other languages to portuguese, spanish and english aiming the understanding of technical content

Integration with other IP offices legacy systems

Next steps

Improvement of patent applications search functionalities

Improvement of patent applications analysis possibilities

Changes in graphical user interface

More options for technical reports

e-PEC – Electronic Platform for Collaborative Examination

Questions ?

Thank you very much

Alex Garcia Todorov

INPI / CEDIN

todorov@inpi.gov.br