Activities of the commission of the European communities in the field of patent information

Jacques Lannoy, Director, Commission

of the European Communities

Activitiesof the Commissionof the European Communities in the Field of Patent lnfonnation

The work of the Commission of the European Communities in the field of patent information and documentation started in 1973 with the setting up of a working group for patent documentation within the framework of the Committee for Information and Documentation on Sciences and Technology (CIDST) and based on a resolution of the Council of the European Communities of 24 June 1971. The members of the group represented the governments and the industry of the Member Countries of the EEC, the former IIB (Institute International des Brevets) and the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization). The working group worked until 1977 under terms of reference, the main topics of which were: - how to ensure adequate access to the patent literature; - the relations between the patent literature and sectoral information systems; - training of potential users of patent information.

Studies The working group commissioned and carried out a number of studies. It compiled an inventory of existing services in the field of patent information and documentation. This was later edited into a book and published by the Commission (1). To study the habits and attitudes of an important category of users of the patent literature, an enquiry was made in 1976 by the Secretariat of the Working Group assisted by correspondents in the Member Countries. Target of the enquiry was the users of public patent libraries within and outside the national patent office (2). The results of the study showed that in most of the Member Countries the public is reasonably well served with patent libraries, but also that most of them are probably under-utilized. Among the possible reasons for this the results of the study pointed chiefly to the lack in many cases of active promotion of the services of the patent libraries and only to a lesser extent to the shortage of qualified personnel and other inadequacies of the services offered. Present and future use of patent literature The last study initiated by the Working Group was an investigation of the present and future use of patent literature. The study was carried out under contract during 1977 and the main results are published in a report (3). 10

The investigation was carried out in: the Federal Republic of Germany - France and - Ireland through mail questionnaires, interviews and expert panel discussions. The results of the study suggest that the utilization of the patent literature as a source of technical information is rather limited at present; probably because both the knowledge about the patent literarure and experience in its use are not very widely spread. In other words: the potential users who theoretically could benefit most from the application of information found in the patent literature - are not aware of the possibilities of this source of information, - do not have enough specialized training and knowledge to work with patent literature, - find other ways of information more efficient, or - live in a psychological environment that does not encourage the use of patent literature. The barriers against a wider use of patent literature, especially as a source of technical information, by nonprofessionals in this field have their roots in traditionally established behaviour patterns and are of a rather basic nature. A wider use of patent literature will, therefore, depend on the development of a marketing concept designed to change basic behaviour patterns over a long period of time. This concept will also have to devote attention to the “closedgroup effect” of specialists which results in language and interest barriers towards non-specialists. The reorientation of the patent specialists caused by the introduction of a European patent application, which results in a change in their clientele and in different kinds of tasks for them, is a good opportunity to start activities emphasizing the value of patent literature The number of patent searches is an indicator of the uses of patent literature, and although it is a rather questionable indicator, because the search intensity and purposes of the searches are very different, it is the only valuable indicator available at present. From the empirical investigation (answers to the written questionnaire and expert interviews) it can be deduced that: the non-official searches are correlated with the number of patent applications in the home country. -

The empirical data - although requiring a very carethat in the ful interpretation - allow the conclusion, bigger Member Countries between 1 and 2.5 non-offi-

cial patent searches are performed application.

per natIona

patent

world Patent Information 1 (1979) No. I Lannoy - Activities of the CK

there are two parameters to be considered: change of intensity of use (present users) l change of the number of users (potential users) The investigations indicate that the present users are already using patent literature very intensively. By facilitating patent searches their work could be made more efficient which might increase the use but probably not very much. If it would be possible to increase the number of users by changing potential users into patent-oriented users the volume of the patent searches could increase considerably; but for the reasons given above it is not very likely that the number of users will increase significantly in a short run. There are however reasons to expect a slow steady growth of the number of patent-oriented users. l

Further studies Concurrent to the studies commissioned by the Working Group, the Commission has explored the possibilities of other, non-traditional uses of the patent literature. A statistical survey (4) was made of the patent applications published by six of the Member Countries over a period of some years, subdividing the numbers of applications by subject and within each subject class also by country of origin. As subject classification both a patent classification scheme and the NACE classification system were used to obtain the best possible industry oriented technology pattern. A rather simple attempt was made to study in an empirical way, the importance of patents for the process of industrial concentration (5). Finally a study was made of an alternative method of indexing patent documents (6). The new method aims at characterizing each invention by the problem to be solved and the nature of the means used to solve it. If adopted, it could presumably make patent searches for other purposes than novelty considerably easier.

Conclusions and recommendationsof the Patent Documentation Working Group From its studies and deliberations the Working Group concluded that there is at the moment no clearly expressed need for creating a Community patent information centre. There seems to be room, however, for improvement of and additions to existing services, especially in view of the needs of those who want to use patents as a source of technical information. In general access to the national patent documents is reasonably good but access to foreign documents is

bibliographic and information services are in most countries reasonably good, particularly for legal applications, though there are gaps in the sectoral services for scientific and technical information. Also, for any particular search it may be necessary to use several services and this, combined with certain problems of access in areas away from the national centres, led the Working Group to propose that the widest possible range of the existing services be made available through EURONET, the future European network for scientific and technical information. In the opinion of the Working Group there is in the most technical fields insufficient awareness of the potential value of the patent literature as a source of technical knowledge. This is the more deplorable as the patent literature is both extremely comprehensive and well organized and only to a very small extent overlaps with other kinds of technical literature (7). An even bigger problem is, however, that the existing facilities are strongly under-exploited (2). The most important reasons for this low degree of exploitation of the patent literature apart from the legal aspects of patents seem to be: - lack of knowledge of its contents, its qualities or even its existence; - to difficult access or lack of knowledge of access possibilities; - the special language used in patent documents derogatorily called “patentese”. What is needed is, therefore, both a dedicated effort to “sell” the patent literature and its use as source of technical information to its potential users; and an effort to improve the access to the patent literature for purposes apart from legal application. Evidence collected on the need for including patents into sectoral information systems is highly conflicting. The findings of Liebesny et al (7) show that the patent literature is a separate body of technical literature supplementing other kinds of technical literature, e.g. journals; and the combination of patents and other kinds of literature exists in some very successful documentation systems. But on the other hand, the studies performed by the Working Group did not reveal any strong need for combined systems covering both patents and other kinds of literature. Whether this is due to lack of awareness of the problem of the result of a consciously taken decision is not clear. In the opinion of the group it should be studied case by case whether it is warranted on a cost-benefit basis to include patents in a sectoral system or whether it would suffice to refer to appropriate relevant patent information systems.

World Patent lnformotion 1 (1979) No. 1 Lannoy - Activities of the CEC

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The general interest in patent information and documentation is growing both within and outside the Community. The European and Community Patents make it probable that the role of the national patent offices will in the future change even more from being that of solely patent granting authorities to that of service institutions offering services also in the information and documentation field to the public. Evidently the patent offices are themselves well aware of the situation, and the following recommendations should be understood as an attempt both to support the above mentioned general tendency and to show how the Community can make an own effort to benefit of technical scientists, inventors and innovators in the Member Countries. The findings of the Working Group have led it to make the following recommendations to the EC Commission and through this to the Governments ofthe Member Countries. 1. Data bases for EURONET The existing and planneddatabasesof ing organizations should be made EURONET:

at least the followavailable through

The European Patent Office National Patent Offices INPADOC - International Patent Documentation Center Derwent Publications Ltd. Internationale Dokumentationsgesellschaft fur Chemie I.F.I. Inspec These data bases are in the opinion of the Working Group a selection of the most pertinent ones, If a further selection has to be made this should be done in a way ensuring all users the same possibility of getting information directly from the source while at the same time trying to avoid unnecessary duplication of work. It is essential, however, that at least one of the existing databasescoveringorganicchemistryshouldbeavailable. 2. Feasibility study on legal status information service The Commission should sponsor a study to be carried out on the feasibility of establishing a centralized legal status service accessible through EURONET providing up-todate information on protective rights and applications therefore in all the Member Countries of the Community. Independent on the result of the study all national patent offices should be requested to make legal status information available to the public. 12

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3. Feasibility study on licence

information

system

The Commission should sponsor a study to be carried out on the feasibility of estab!ishing a centralized cooperative system containing information on licenses available, which system could be made accessible through EURONET. At the moment available licenses are being offered by about 200 journals, bulletin, etc. by numerous licence brokers and by public or semi-public organization like NRDC, ANVAR, NASA, etc. Thus it appears difficult at any time to gain a comprehensive picture of the licenses offered. 4. Improved access at the national centres for patent documentation The Commission should request the Governments of the Member Countries of the Community that their Patent Office or Department responsible for scientific and technical information and means a) keep adequate sets of patent documents for providing copies of them available to the public; To determine what should be considered an adequate set of patent documents it should be taken into account that the provisions of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) will eventually become effective in the Member Countries of the Community. The need of the users of the patent office libraries will, therefore, not be anything less than the PCT minimum documentation, comprising not only patent documents but also periodicals and monographs. access; b) provide means of systematic Collections of patent documents are normally stored either in numerical order or according to one or more patent classification systems. Storage in numerical order facilitates retrieval of selected documents, e.g. for copying. It also facilitates retrieval of documents identified by name of patentee, which is a common method of approach. For subject searches two approaches are feasible. The first is to organize a collection of the patent documents by subject and where this is done it is strongly recommended that the order be that of the lnternational Patent Classification, since all patent documents bear IPC symbols even when a national scheme is also used. The second method is to provide access through classified and/or other subject arranged indexes. For example, nationalcentres for patent documentation usually provide classified sets of abstracts, such as the UK Abridgments, and file lists of their own documents, but these need supplementing, e.g. by Information

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The journal should be clearly aimed at meeting the objective of promoting the use of the patent literature and not duplicate the content of existing competent periodicals.

Present state and the future To implement the recommendations the Commission has taken several initiatives: - this very journal has come into being in its actual form as a result of recommendation 9; - successful negotations have been carried on with data base suppliers to ensure that EURONET right from its start will offer the posibility of on-line patent searches ; - the extended and updated inventory foreseen in recommendation 9 is due to be published later this year ; - the problems of license information, recommendation 3, training in patent searching, recommendation 8, and local patent information centres, recommendation 6, are all being studied in various ad hoc committees by representatives of the Member Countries and of the Commission; - as one attempt to solve the language problems in connection with the patent literature the Commission has launched a study of the feasibility of automatic translation of patent documents and patent abstracts. In addition to this the dialogue between the Commission and the Member Countries continues; and a pattern is emerging where the tasks will be so shared that the national patent offices and their “subsidiaries”, the patent libraries, remain responsible for the direct contact to the users of patent documentation; and the Commission lends its assistance in promoting in general the awareness among potential users of the value of the patent literature and in supporting and coordinating as far as possible national activities in the Member Countries aiming at improving the patent information services available to the public.

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Bibliography (1)

Potent Information and Documentation. An Inventory

of Services available to the Public in the European Communities - EUR 5558 d, c, f - Verlag Dokumentation, Miinchen 1976. (2)H. Bank: Survey of readership in public patent libraries EUR 5831 d, e, f - Commission of the European Communities, Directorate General “Scientific and Technical information and Information Mmagcmcnt”, Luxembourg 1977. (3)s. Starkloff cf nl: Investigation of the present and future USC of patent literature - EUR 5952 EN Commission of the European Communities - Directorate General “Scientific andTechnicalInformation Management”, Luxembourg 1978. (4)H. Kronz & H. Grevink: Technology pattern in the EEC EUR 5530 e - Commission of the European Communities - Directorate GeneraI “Scientific and Technical Information and Information Management”, Luxembourg 1977. (5) K. Grefermann & E. Peffgen: Erfassung der Konzcntration an Hand von PatentportcfeuiIles - IF0 Institut tir Wirtschaftsforschung - Miinchen 1976. (6) B. Starkloff et nl: Mtiglichkeitcn fiir eine inhlltscrschliesrcnde Indexicrung da PatcntIitcratur. BF - R - 62, 979, 1 - BatteIIc - Institut e. V. Frankfurt/Main (7) F. Liebesny et al: The Scientific and TechnicaI Information contained in Patent Specifications - The Extent and Time Factors of its Pubtication in other Forms of Literature. OSTI Report School

No 5 177 - The Polytechnic

of Librarianship,

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