- Email: [email protected]
EPO Patent Information Conference, Kilkenny, Ireland, October, 2011
World Patent Information 34 (2012) 64–66
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
World Patent Information journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worpatin
Conference report
EPO Patent Information Conference, Kilkenny, Ireland, October, 2011 1. Opening ceremony The usual formal opening ceremony was hosted this time by the broadcaster Leo Enright. Included were speeches from Richard Bruton TD, Ireland’s Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation; Benoît Battistelli, EPO President; and Eamonn Laird, Head of the Irish Patents Office. During these speeches a direct link between the EPO and Kilkenny was noted – the EPO logo was designed there. All three speakers emphasised the importance of the patent system and the resulting patent information to the innovation process and the significance of that process to economic well-being. In addition Benoît Battistelli confirmed the importance of patent information dissemination as one of the two key tasks of the EPO to grant patents and to inform the public of the disclosures that accompany the grant of such privileges. He also confirmed his personal commitment to this latter aspect, as well as the granting of patents, both in his previous post at INPI and now at the EPO. In outlining the main future priorities of the EPO he referred to quality and efficiency as cornerstones throughout the organisation. In respect of patent information, high quality data continues to be a top priority, especially in the wider environment of government commitments worldwide to open access to public data. He emphasised that the EPO had been moving in this direction for many years, with ready access to raw data and to their own public databases such as Espacenet. Significant improvements to these search tools are planned as part of the EPO’s IT Roadmap. Other topics covered by the EPO President, of particular relevance to the conference audience, included the IP5 developments - such as the CPC and Common Documentation policy, the Common Citation Document and the machine translation progress through the partnership with Google. In his keynote address, Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Southampton, UK, gave a very wide ranging and interesting presentation on the increasing openness, especially at all levels of government, and on the many potential new possibilities arising from this in the many communications’ techniques thus becoming available. 2. Conference key theme: “providing worldwide patent data” The major plenary sessions under this theme were: 2.1. Getting your own house in order In the case of the EPO this highlighted the new portal at data.epo. org as both a useful resource for the patent information community and as a contribution to open government initiatives (Pierre
doi:10.1016/j.wpi.2011.11.009
Avédikian, EPO) and the federated patent register (Nigel Clarke, EPO). In similar sessions from the EPO team, we were updated by Johannes Schaaf on PATSTAT and Nigel Clarke on Espacenet. 2.2. Collecting the worldwide data This included a presentation on the situation regarding Latin America – for example Brazil and Mexico are well ahead of the rest, with a few countries still supplying no or very little data (Christian Fleckinger, EPO), WIPO’s role as an information provider, e.g. PATENTSCOPE (Paul Halfpenny, WIPO), and SPC data, especially from Ireland (Dolores Cassidy, Irish Patents Office). The SPC presentation provided a good summary of the sometimes vexed question of SPCs, reminding us that they are often contentious because of their very high value to companies in covering drugs etc that are commercially successful. Some statistics and brief comments on some ECJ decisions were included, as well as new features such as the paediatric extensions. 2.3. Enhancing the data Covered in this area were classification – the ICO codes in the CPC (Pierre Held, EPO), machine translation and Google Patent Search (Jon Orwant, Google), understanding Japanese Patent Office data (Toshinao Yamazaki, JETRO) and a survey of the challenges for a patent searcher in a large multi-national (Bernd Wolter, Siemens). The presentation on the ICO codes and the CPC gave attendees a clear idea of the types of ICO codes used and how they will be integrated into the conversion of the IPC based ECLA into the CPC by 1 January 2013, resulting most probably in codes in the following format, e.g. for the ECLA subclass H01L, corresponding ICO codes such as T01L925/065S becomes H01L2925/06504. Jon Orwant gave a fascinating insight into the many strands of Google activity in the IP field, including the work with the EPO and the USPTO, and various ideas that Google are considering for other ways in which they may be able to improve the world of IP and patent information retrieval. 2.4. Providing the means for users to access the data Heiko Wongel (EPO) started this session with a high-level view on the nature of EPO data and its availability in a variety of forms. Commercial providers (Questel – Laurent Hill and LexisNexis – Eric van Stegeren) then explained the current value-add of their services, Paul van Elburg (Shell) examined the value of SmartSearch on Espacenet, and Guido Moradei and Pier Carlo Contessini
Conference report / World Patent Information 34 (2012) 64–66
reported on initial experiments with a few semantic patent searches on different systems, with interesting results. 3. Discussion rounds Attendees selected two from a wide choice. One of particular interest that I attended: 3.1. How could EPOQUE, the leading tool for patent examiners, help the patent search community? A popular and interesting session was started by Marc Adriaenssens, ‘the father of EPOQUE’, and expertly chaired by Minoo Philipp (now with Evonik Industries). The history of EPOQUE since 1989 was briefly reviewed and some statistics provided – currently the system has around 125 databases and 540 million records in the form available to EPO examiners. The different current users are as follows, with approximate user numbers in each category: 1) 4000 EPO examiners 2) 2500 examiners in national patent offices, each with access to up to 100 databases 3) Espacenet public users, with about 31 of the databases included 4) 8000 Chinese patent examiners at SIPO, using an extensive duplicate copy of the system. The system uses a single command language, patent number format and so on. The system has been rebuilt over recent years, due for completion by the end of 2012, and includes facilities such as a semi-automatic search on each new patent application to provide examiners with a useful starting-point for their subsequent search work.
65
The big question – what part of this system might in future be provided to external users- currently awaits strategic policy decisions at a high level in the EPO. The session concluded with a ‘wish list’ of: 1) Information on the possibility to buy or licence the system 2) Access to the shared search strategies that are now in the EPO version 3) The EPO working more closely with providers in discussions and actions on providing the EPOQUE system to external users. 4. The Super Workshop for expert patent searchers This event was once again organised and managed with aplomb by Peter Kallas (BASF). There was a high attendance and an active interchange between the audience and the EPO staff present (including Richard Flammer, Principal Director in Vienna, Pierre Avédikian, Heiko Wongel and Pierre Held). A broad discussion was held around the following topics, including: 4.1. CPC Due for completion and effective from 1 January 2013, the CPC will be updated monthly. We were assured that the massive change of perspective of the USPTO staff is well underway as they convert from their own USPC system to the IPC-derived CPC. It was confirmed that KIPO, SIPO and JPO are also well committed to this process. 4.2. Legal status data worldwide The redundancy between INPADOC and PATENTSCOPE was discussed and the important point emphasised that the reliability,
Fig. 1. The combined European Patent Office and Irish Patents Office stand in the accompanying exhibition.
66
Conference report / World Patent Information 34 (2012) 64–66
timeliness and completeness of each system was predicated on the supply by national patent offices of data of this quality. Clearly the EPO and WIPO can influence but not dictate what they receive from patent offices worldwide, and this limitation is unlikely to be resolved in the short or medium term.
7. Participants There were around 320 participants this year, from the following countries:
Another lively session on this topic ensued! Of course the partnership with Google Translate was much to the fore. It is based on a complex contract to ensure mutual benefits, within necessary constraints for both Google and the EPO. Work is well advanced on the initial batch of some of the more common languages, e.g. EN, DE, FR, SE etc.
1) The four countries most represented were Germany (14%), the UK (10%) and France and Ireland (each 7%) 2) The next five countries which were also well represented were The Netherlands, Belgium, India, Switzerland and Denmark 3) With lesser numbers, but still significant, were the Russian Federation, Italy, Spain and Austria 4) There were also participants from countries spread worldwide, such as the USA, Norway, Israel, Romania, China, Japan, Australia and Korea.
5. Social events
8. And finally.
An entertaining evening was provided by a Gaelic group of music and dance, including an outstanding dancer - Richard Murray. On another evening a ‘pub crawl’ around the very many pubs and bars of Kilkenny was arranged, with vouchers provided for a meal and up to nine drinks! Not my scene these days, but certainly enjoyed by many delegates.
This was a pleasant, well organised and useful conference – congratulations to Richard Flammer, Dan Shalloe and their team at the EPO, and their counterparts at the Irish Patents Office, for bringing everything together so well. Next year’s conference will be in Hamburg, Germany from 6 to 8 November 2012.
4.3. Is Google saving the users from drowning in the unreadable?
6. Exhibition and training sessions The conference was complemented by an extensive exhibition of patent information providers – both commercial and patent offices (Fig. 1), with accompanying presentations and training sessions.
Michael Blackman, Editor-in-Chief 45 Kenwood Drive, Beckenham, Kent BR3 6QY, UK E-mail address: [email protected]
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
World Patent Information journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worpatin
Conference report
EPO Patent Information Conference, Kilkenny, Ireland, October, 2011 1. Opening ceremony The usual formal opening ceremony was hosted this time by the broadcaster Leo Enright. Included were speeches from Richard Bruton TD, Ireland’s Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation; Benoît Battistelli, EPO President; and Eamonn Laird, Head of the Irish Patents Office. During these speeches a direct link between the EPO and Kilkenny was noted – the EPO logo was designed there. All three speakers emphasised the importance of the patent system and the resulting patent information to the innovation process and the significance of that process to economic well-being. In addition Benoît Battistelli confirmed the importance of patent information dissemination as one of the two key tasks of the EPO to grant patents and to inform the public of the disclosures that accompany the grant of such privileges. He also confirmed his personal commitment to this latter aspect, as well as the granting of patents, both in his previous post at INPI and now at the EPO. In outlining the main future priorities of the EPO he referred to quality and efficiency as cornerstones throughout the organisation. In respect of patent information, high quality data continues to be a top priority, especially in the wider environment of government commitments worldwide to open access to public data. He emphasised that the EPO had been moving in this direction for many years, with ready access to raw data and to their own public databases such as Espacenet. Significant improvements to these search tools are planned as part of the EPO’s IT Roadmap. Other topics covered by the EPO President, of particular relevance to the conference audience, included the IP5 developments - such as the CPC and Common Documentation policy, the Common Citation Document and the machine translation progress through the partnership with Google. In his keynote address, Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Southampton, UK, gave a very wide ranging and interesting presentation on the increasing openness, especially at all levels of government, and on the many potential new possibilities arising from this in the many communications’ techniques thus becoming available. 2. Conference key theme: “providing worldwide patent data” The major plenary sessions under this theme were: 2.1. Getting your own house in order In the case of the EPO this highlighted the new portal at data.epo. org as both a useful resource for the patent information community and as a contribution to open government initiatives (Pierre
doi:10.1016/j.wpi.2011.11.009
Avédikian, EPO) and the federated patent register (Nigel Clarke, EPO). In similar sessions from the EPO team, we were updated by Johannes Schaaf on PATSTAT and Nigel Clarke on Espacenet. 2.2. Collecting the worldwide data This included a presentation on the situation regarding Latin America – for example Brazil and Mexico are well ahead of the rest, with a few countries still supplying no or very little data (Christian Fleckinger, EPO), WIPO’s role as an information provider, e.g. PATENTSCOPE (Paul Halfpenny, WIPO), and SPC data, especially from Ireland (Dolores Cassidy, Irish Patents Office). The SPC presentation provided a good summary of the sometimes vexed question of SPCs, reminding us that they are often contentious because of their very high value to companies in covering drugs etc that are commercially successful. Some statistics and brief comments on some ECJ decisions were included, as well as new features such as the paediatric extensions. 2.3. Enhancing the data Covered in this area were classification – the ICO codes in the CPC (Pierre Held, EPO), machine translation and Google Patent Search (Jon Orwant, Google), understanding Japanese Patent Office data (Toshinao Yamazaki, JETRO) and a survey of the challenges for a patent searcher in a large multi-national (Bernd Wolter, Siemens). The presentation on the ICO codes and the CPC gave attendees a clear idea of the types of ICO codes used and how they will be integrated into the conversion of the IPC based ECLA into the CPC by 1 January 2013, resulting most probably in codes in the following format, e.g. for the ECLA subclass H01L, corresponding ICO codes such as T01L925/065S becomes H01L2925/06504. Jon Orwant gave a fascinating insight into the many strands of Google activity in the IP field, including the work with the EPO and the USPTO, and various ideas that Google are considering for other ways in which they may be able to improve the world of IP and patent information retrieval. 2.4. Providing the means for users to access the data Heiko Wongel (EPO) started this session with a high-level view on the nature of EPO data and its availability in a variety of forms. Commercial providers (Questel – Laurent Hill and LexisNexis – Eric van Stegeren) then explained the current value-add of their services, Paul van Elburg (Shell) examined the value of SmartSearch on Espacenet, and Guido Moradei and Pier Carlo Contessini
Conference report / World Patent Information 34 (2012) 64–66
reported on initial experiments with a few semantic patent searches on different systems, with interesting results. 3. Discussion rounds Attendees selected two from a wide choice. One of particular interest that I attended: 3.1. How could EPOQUE, the leading tool for patent examiners, help the patent search community? A popular and interesting session was started by Marc Adriaenssens, ‘the father of EPOQUE’, and expertly chaired by Minoo Philipp (now with Evonik Industries). The history of EPOQUE since 1989 was briefly reviewed and some statistics provided – currently the system has around 125 databases and 540 million records in the form available to EPO examiners. The different current users are as follows, with approximate user numbers in each category: 1) 4000 EPO examiners 2) 2500 examiners in national patent offices, each with access to up to 100 databases 3) Espacenet public users, with about 31 of the databases included 4) 8000 Chinese patent examiners at SIPO, using an extensive duplicate copy of the system. The system uses a single command language, patent number format and so on. The system has been rebuilt over recent years, due for completion by the end of 2012, and includes facilities such as a semi-automatic search on each new patent application to provide examiners with a useful starting-point for their subsequent search work.
65
The big question – what part of this system might in future be provided to external users- currently awaits strategic policy decisions at a high level in the EPO. The session concluded with a ‘wish list’ of: 1) Information on the possibility to buy or licence the system 2) Access to the shared search strategies that are now in the EPO version 3) The EPO working more closely with providers in discussions and actions on providing the EPOQUE system to external users. 4. The Super Workshop for expert patent searchers This event was once again organised and managed with aplomb by Peter Kallas (BASF). There was a high attendance and an active interchange between the audience and the EPO staff present (including Richard Flammer, Principal Director in Vienna, Pierre Avédikian, Heiko Wongel and Pierre Held). A broad discussion was held around the following topics, including: 4.1. CPC Due for completion and effective from 1 January 2013, the CPC will be updated monthly. We were assured that the massive change of perspective of the USPTO staff is well underway as they convert from their own USPC system to the IPC-derived CPC. It was confirmed that KIPO, SIPO and JPO are also well committed to this process. 4.2. Legal status data worldwide The redundancy between INPADOC and PATENTSCOPE was discussed and the important point emphasised that the reliability,
Fig. 1. The combined European Patent Office and Irish Patents Office stand in the accompanying exhibition.
66
Conference report / World Patent Information 34 (2012) 64–66
timeliness and completeness of each system was predicated on the supply by national patent offices of data of this quality. Clearly the EPO and WIPO can influence but not dictate what they receive from patent offices worldwide, and this limitation is unlikely to be resolved in the short or medium term.
7. Participants There were around 320 participants this year, from the following countries:
Another lively session on this topic ensued! Of course the partnership with Google Translate was much to the fore. It is based on a complex contract to ensure mutual benefits, within necessary constraints for both Google and the EPO. Work is well advanced on the initial batch of some of the more common languages, e.g. EN, DE, FR, SE etc.
1) The four countries most represented were Germany (14%), the UK (10%) and France and Ireland (each 7%) 2) The next five countries which were also well represented were The Netherlands, Belgium, India, Switzerland and Denmark 3) With lesser numbers, but still significant, were the Russian Federation, Italy, Spain and Austria 4) There were also participants from countries spread worldwide, such as the USA, Norway, Israel, Romania, China, Japan, Australia and Korea.
5. Social events
8. And finally.
An entertaining evening was provided by a Gaelic group of music and dance, including an outstanding dancer - Richard Murray. On another evening a ‘pub crawl’ around the very many pubs and bars of Kilkenny was arranged, with vouchers provided for a meal and up to nine drinks! Not my scene these days, but certainly enjoyed by many delegates.
This was a pleasant, well organised and useful conference – congratulations to Richard Flammer, Dan Shalloe and their team at the EPO, and their counterparts at the Irish Patents Office, for bringing everything together so well. Next year’s conference will be in Hamburg, Germany from 6 to 8 November 2012.
4.3. Is Google saving the users from drowning in the unreadable?
6. Exhibition and training sessions The conference was complemented by an extensive exhibition of patent information providers – both commercial and patent offices (Fig. 1), with accompanying presentations and training sessions.
Michael Blackman, Editor-in-Chief 45 Kenwood Drive, Beckenham, Kent BR3 6QY, UK E-mail address: [email protected]