- Email: [email protected]
News on patent, trademark and design databases on the Internet
World Patent Information 30 (2008) 73–75 www.elsevier.com/locate/worpatin
News on patent, trademark and design databases on the Internet Welcome to this new incarnation of the World Patent Information internet news column. As he announced recently, Steve Van Dulken has decided to concentrate on other work for the British Library and pass the column on to me. I intend to continue his coverage of developments in web databases and gazettes, although I will also be mentioning some other interesting developments on the IP internet. I would be very happy to receive feedback on whether, you, the readers, think this coverage meets your needs, as well as, of course, tip-offs about new material online. Armenia has a new ‘‘Information Retrieval System for Patents and Utility Models’’ at http://212.176.91.134/ armpatent3.htm. It can be searched by publication or application number, inventors, assignees, title/abstract and IPC. Bibliographic details of applications, including titles and abstracts, are available in English, and full specifications in Armenian. (Note that Armenian uses a unique non-Roman alphabet, so knowledge of any other language will not be much help in interpreting the documents.) Although the site appears to state that documents are only available to 2005, more recent documents can be retrieved. Austria now has a Publication Server at http:// www.patentamt.at/Home/daspatentamt/PubServ/Pubserv_en.html. This allows downloading of all patent and utility model applications and granted specifications published since 2005, in PDF format or in XML format for Mimosa. The site is entirely available in English, and documents can be searched by publication number, filing number, or IPC to the level of the first subclass. Lists of documents published each month are available in XML format. A remark in the CIPA Journal has alerted me to the fact that British granted specifications are now easily available via the UK Esp@cenetÒ server at http://gb. espacenet.com. It is necessary to select the ‘‘GB’’ rather than the ‘‘worldwide’’ database. Any search will then retrieve separate entries for A and B British documents. According to the information provided, all B specifications published since June 2002 are included. The ‘‘Bibliographic data’’ tab on the entries on this GB database now also includes a direct link to the free UK IPO status database entry for the patent. doi:10.1016/j.wpi.2007.09.003
The Czech Republic’s Trademarks Database at http:// www.upv.cz/pls/portal30/ozfrm?plan=English now includes national, OHIM, and Madrid Agreement marks. It is no longer necessary to search for Madrid Agreement marks valid in the Czech Republic on a separate database. Estonia now has a ‘‘Database of the European Patents Validated in Estonia’’ at http://www.epa.ee/client/default. asp?wa_id=798. The search page is in Estonian, but it is easy to guess what most of the search boxes refer to from the examples printed next to them. It allows searching by Estonian publication number, European publication or application number, title (in Estonian), IPC, applicant, and inventor. A variety of status information is available, although only in Estonian. I was unable to determine whether documents are available. GenericsWeb, at http://www.genericsweb.com, is a web site aimed at the generic pharmaceuticals industry, from the Australian pharmaceutical patent information company XIP. It now has two subscription patent databases available. Pipeline Selector is claimed to allow the user to search for individual drugs, and discover and analyse information on their current patent status and patenting activity relating to them. Pipeline Developer is a pharmaceutical patent database based more conventionally around the patent families themselves, including their subject matter, status, and any litigation related to them. Coverage of both databases includes the USA, the UK, Germany, Canada and Australia. Georgia now has patent, utility model, trade mark and design databases available at http://www.sakpatenti.org.ge/PatentSearcher/Searching/main.aspx. The search page is labelled in English but searches must be entered in Georgian. I have been unable to retrieve any results from this site, but a Georgian-reader may find the system more usable. Greece has now posted patent journals since April 2002 and registered design journals since January 2004 on the web at http://www.obi.gr/online/index.php?option=com_ docman&task=cat_view&gid=1407&Itemid=36. The Gulf States Co-Operation Council (including Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates) has placed all but the first issue of its intermittently-published Patent Gazette online in
74
News on patent, trademark and design databases / World Patent Information 30 (2008) 73–75
various formats at http://www.gccpo.org/9.htm. In some cases front pages of patents are available. The index page and all documents are in Arabic only. India has now placed its Trade Mark Journal since April 2006 on the web at http://ipindia.nic.in/tmr_new/ tm_journal/index.htm, to complement the online copies of its patent journal. A space on the patent office website for Designs Notifications has been created at http://ipindia. nic.in/ipr/design/design_n.htm, although at the time of writing only two issues, from 2003, had been uploaded. The unofficial Ekaswa patent databases, which for a long time ran only to the end of 2004, have been supplemented by an Ekaswa C database of applications, at http://www. indianpatents.org.in/db/testmainc.asp, which claims to be up to date to the end of 2006. The information available, however, seems less than that provided by the recentlyinaugurated BigPatents India. Indonesia has introduced patent, trade mark, design and copyright databases, all accessible from the front page of the Indonesian Patent Office website at http:// www.dgip.go.id/ebscript/publicportal.cgi. Unfortunately, at the time of access, all attempts to search all of these produced ‘‘server errors’’. One must hope that the problems will be fixed by the time this article reaches print. Lithuania has placed all its Official Gazettes since 2005 on the web in pdf format at http://www.vpb.gov.lt/en/ index.php?c=gazette.php. It also has a Patent Database at http://www.vpb.gov.lt/db_patentai/?l=en which allows searching by subject, holder or numbers. Documents are currently available only as abstract, claims and drawings, without the full description. Searchable English titles and abstracts are included and the entire system, including search, results and status pages, is provided in both Lithuanian and English. The Pakistan Patent Office has now begun to place its intellectual property gazettes on its web site as Microsoft Word files. At present the site features copies of the monthly Trade Mark Journal since July 1996 at http:// www.ipo.gov.pk/Trademark/TrademarkJournal.aspx. Weekly Patent Gazette Notifications are available dating back to August 2005 at http://www.ipo.gov.pk/Patent/ PatentGazzette.aspx, including brief descriptions of patent applications, longer abstracts of accepted applications, and lists of patents with sealing fees due. Readers should be warned that the text of the HTML links to these files does not reliably record the dates involved, with the same link text being sometimes repeated to link to files from different dates. There are also annual lists of patents granted for 2005 and 2006 at http://www.ipo.gov.pk/Patent/ PatentGranted.aspx. Lists of expired patents are available at http://www.ipo.gov.pk/Patent/PatentExpired.aspx, monthly for 2007, while a single list is available for 2006. All documents are in English. The Australian scientific institute CAMBIA has now extended the coverage of its free Patentlens database, at http://www.patentlens.net/daisy/patentlens/patent
lens.html, from biology to all subjects. The site allows searching of the full text (prepared by optical character recognition) of AU applications and granted specifications since 1998, US specifications since 1976, and all WO and granted EP documents, as well as data on families and status. This relatively little-known system is, so far as I am aware, the only free site allowing full-text searching of AU or EP documents. Romania has a new no-frills trade mark database at http://bd.osim.ro/marci/index.jsp, at present in Romanian only and limited to searching by application or grant number. Saudi Arabia has placed its patent gazette from 1996 to date on line at http://www.kacst.edu.sa/mangement/ patent/mag.php. All documents are in Arabic. Serbia, now officially an independent state after the separation of Montenegro, has placed a Trade Marks database online at http://www.yupat.sv.gov.yu/ index.php?language=eng&tid=21#. It is available in English and is claimed to contain all currently-valid marks. Design and patent databases are promised in the near future. A Montenegro patent office web site is awaited. Singapore has introduced a Designs eSearch database covering current and pending designs, and placed copies of its Designs Journal since April 2007 on the web. Both are accessible at http://www.ipos.gov.sg/leftNav/des/ eDesigns.htm. Switzerland has shut down its national patent document download server on the grounds that all the documents are available through Esp@cenetÒ. It remains to be seen if any other nations will decide that it is no longer necessary to provide such a service. I wonder if there are any Swiss patent documents too long to be downloaded in one go from Esp@cenetÒ? Taiwan trade marks can be searched in English by mark text or number, but not proprietor, at http:// tipo.hinet.net/TIPO_DRE/BasicIPO.html. Note that trade marks consisting entirely of Chinese characters cannot be searched on this page, although there is apparently a database interface for this on the Chinese-language web site. A new historical database has been created by third parties for USA patents. The Wyoming State Library’s patent and trademark department has a number of historical US patent databases of local interest at http:// will.state.wy.us/sis/ptdl/index.html, as well as a database of all US patents which refer to changes of name by applicants. This is presumably provided mainly as a potential source for family history research, but also provides interesting testimony to the gradual Anglicisation of the culture of mainland European immigrants to the USA. The IP Service of Venezuela has reorganised its free web database offering. Patents and designs can be searched at http://www.sapi.gob.ve/vpat/index_patentec_n.php. The database appears to contain bibliographic details of
News on patent, trademark and design databases / World Patent Information 30 (2008) 73–75
registrations dating back to the early 1970s. Full documents are available in pdf format for many documents published from 2000 on and a few from the 1990s. Currently-valid trade marks can be searched by mark text only at http://www.sapi.gob.ve/consulta/indexbt_n.php and the status of patents and trade marks can be searched by number only at http://www.sapi.gob.ve/consulta/ indexmp_n.php. All three databases are Spanish-language only. An interesting new phenomenon is the collection of Global IP Scorecards created by the blogging patent attorney Duncan Bucknell at http://duncanbucknell.com/ scorecards/. These attempt to summarise the current state of play in well-known IP legal battles by individual jurisdiction. Scorecards created so far deal with the Eli Lilly vs. Teva and Dr Reddy’s dispute over Zyprexa; the dispute between Anheuser-Busch and Budejovicky´ Budvar over the right to use the "Budweiser" brand name; and the Pfizer vs. Ranbaxy patent dispute over Lipitor. Further scorecards dealing with general issues rather than specific legal battles include the legality under various countries’ trade mark law of the use of other people’s badges of origin as meta tags or paid search keywords to attract people to one’s own website, and the use of the TRIPS provisions for
75
compulsory licensing of socially-vital pharmaceuticals by developing nations. And finally, in the area of promising potential rather than actual new developments, Dr Jeremy Phillips of Queen Mary and Westfield College has announced, on his IPKat blog, a proposal for a comprehensive wiki on UK intellectual property law, freely readable by the public but edited by subject experts. Those interested should view his blog posts at http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2007/07/room6-manifesto-wiki-vision-for-future.html and http:// ipkitten.blogspot.com/2007/08/ip-wiki-and-room-6-manifesto-latest.html, or the wiki proposal itself at http:// ipdailyupdate.pbwiki.com/Draft-proposal-for-an-IP-Lawwiki. Any readers who see themselves as potential editors are invited to contact him. As before, links in this column will be added to the British Library links page at http://www.bl.uk/patents. Philip Eagle The British Library Business and Intellectual Property Centre 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB, UK E-mail address: [email protected]
News on patent, trademark and design databases on the Internet Welcome to this new incarnation of the World Patent Information internet news column. As he announced recently, Steve Van Dulken has decided to concentrate on other work for the British Library and pass the column on to me. I intend to continue his coverage of developments in web databases and gazettes, although I will also be mentioning some other interesting developments on the IP internet. I would be very happy to receive feedback on whether, you, the readers, think this coverage meets your needs, as well as, of course, tip-offs about new material online. Armenia has a new ‘‘Information Retrieval System for Patents and Utility Models’’ at http://212.176.91.134/ armpatent3.htm. It can be searched by publication or application number, inventors, assignees, title/abstract and IPC. Bibliographic details of applications, including titles and abstracts, are available in English, and full specifications in Armenian. (Note that Armenian uses a unique non-Roman alphabet, so knowledge of any other language will not be much help in interpreting the documents.) Although the site appears to state that documents are only available to 2005, more recent documents can be retrieved. Austria now has a Publication Server at http:// www.patentamt.at/Home/daspatentamt/PubServ/Pubserv_en.html. This allows downloading of all patent and utility model applications and granted specifications published since 2005, in PDF format or in XML format for Mimosa. The site is entirely available in English, and documents can be searched by publication number, filing number, or IPC to the level of the first subclass. Lists of documents published each month are available in XML format. A remark in the CIPA Journal has alerted me to the fact that British granted specifications are now easily available via the UK Esp@cenetÒ server at http://gb. espacenet.com. It is necessary to select the ‘‘GB’’ rather than the ‘‘worldwide’’ database. Any search will then retrieve separate entries for A and B British documents. According to the information provided, all B specifications published since June 2002 are included. The ‘‘Bibliographic data’’ tab on the entries on this GB database now also includes a direct link to the free UK IPO status database entry for the patent. doi:10.1016/j.wpi.2007.09.003
The Czech Republic’s Trademarks Database at http:// www.upv.cz/pls/portal30/ozfrm?plan=English now includes national, OHIM, and Madrid Agreement marks. It is no longer necessary to search for Madrid Agreement marks valid in the Czech Republic on a separate database. Estonia now has a ‘‘Database of the European Patents Validated in Estonia’’ at http://www.epa.ee/client/default. asp?wa_id=798. The search page is in Estonian, but it is easy to guess what most of the search boxes refer to from the examples printed next to them. It allows searching by Estonian publication number, European publication or application number, title (in Estonian), IPC, applicant, and inventor. A variety of status information is available, although only in Estonian. I was unable to determine whether documents are available. GenericsWeb, at http://www.genericsweb.com, is a web site aimed at the generic pharmaceuticals industry, from the Australian pharmaceutical patent information company XIP. It now has two subscription patent databases available. Pipeline Selector is claimed to allow the user to search for individual drugs, and discover and analyse information on their current patent status and patenting activity relating to them. Pipeline Developer is a pharmaceutical patent database based more conventionally around the patent families themselves, including their subject matter, status, and any litigation related to them. Coverage of both databases includes the USA, the UK, Germany, Canada and Australia. Georgia now has patent, utility model, trade mark and design databases available at http://www.sakpatenti.org.ge/PatentSearcher/Searching/main.aspx. The search page is labelled in English but searches must be entered in Georgian. I have been unable to retrieve any results from this site, but a Georgian-reader may find the system more usable. Greece has now posted patent journals since April 2002 and registered design journals since January 2004 on the web at http://www.obi.gr/online/index.php?option=com_ docman&task=cat_view&gid=1407&Itemid=36. The Gulf States Co-Operation Council (including Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates) has placed all but the first issue of its intermittently-published Patent Gazette online in
74
News on patent, trademark and design databases / World Patent Information 30 (2008) 73–75
various formats at http://www.gccpo.org/9.htm. In some cases front pages of patents are available. The index page and all documents are in Arabic only. India has now placed its Trade Mark Journal since April 2006 on the web at http://ipindia.nic.in/tmr_new/ tm_journal/index.htm, to complement the online copies of its patent journal. A space on the patent office website for Designs Notifications has been created at http://ipindia. nic.in/ipr/design/design_n.htm, although at the time of writing only two issues, from 2003, had been uploaded. The unofficial Ekaswa patent databases, which for a long time ran only to the end of 2004, have been supplemented by an Ekaswa C database of applications, at http://www. indianpatents.org.in/db/testmainc.asp, which claims to be up to date to the end of 2006. The information available, however, seems less than that provided by the recentlyinaugurated BigPatents India. Indonesia has introduced patent, trade mark, design and copyright databases, all accessible from the front page of the Indonesian Patent Office website at http:// www.dgip.go.id/ebscript/publicportal.cgi. Unfortunately, at the time of access, all attempts to search all of these produced ‘‘server errors’’. One must hope that the problems will be fixed by the time this article reaches print. Lithuania has placed all its Official Gazettes since 2005 on the web in pdf format at http://www.vpb.gov.lt/en/ index.php?c=gazette.php. It also has a Patent Database at http://www.vpb.gov.lt/db_patentai/?l=en which allows searching by subject, holder or numbers. Documents are currently available only as abstract, claims and drawings, without the full description. Searchable English titles and abstracts are included and the entire system, including search, results and status pages, is provided in both Lithuanian and English. The Pakistan Patent Office has now begun to place its intellectual property gazettes on its web site as Microsoft Word files. At present the site features copies of the monthly Trade Mark Journal since July 1996 at http:// www.ipo.gov.pk/Trademark/TrademarkJournal.aspx. Weekly Patent Gazette Notifications are available dating back to August 2005 at http://www.ipo.gov.pk/Patent/ PatentGazzette.aspx, including brief descriptions of patent applications, longer abstracts of accepted applications, and lists of patents with sealing fees due. Readers should be warned that the text of the HTML links to these files does not reliably record the dates involved, with the same link text being sometimes repeated to link to files from different dates. There are also annual lists of patents granted for 2005 and 2006 at http://www.ipo.gov.pk/Patent/ PatentGranted.aspx. Lists of expired patents are available at http://www.ipo.gov.pk/Patent/PatentExpired.aspx, monthly for 2007, while a single list is available for 2006. All documents are in English. The Australian scientific institute CAMBIA has now extended the coverage of its free Patentlens database, at http://www.patentlens.net/daisy/patentlens/patent
lens.html, from biology to all subjects. The site allows searching of the full text (prepared by optical character recognition) of AU applications and granted specifications since 1998, US specifications since 1976, and all WO and granted EP documents, as well as data on families and status. This relatively little-known system is, so far as I am aware, the only free site allowing full-text searching of AU or EP documents. Romania has a new no-frills trade mark database at http://bd.osim.ro/marci/index.jsp, at present in Romanian only and limited to searching by application or grant number. Saudi Arabia has placed its patent gazette from 1996 to date on line at http://www.kacst.edu.sa/mangement/ patent/mag.php. All documents are in Arabic. Serbia, now officially an independent state after the separation of Montenegro, has placed a Trade Marks database online at http://www.yupat.sv.gov.yu/ index.php?language=eng&tid=21#. It is available in English and is claimed to contain all currently-valid marks. Design and patent databases are promised in the near future. A Montenegro patent office web site is awaited. Singapore has introduced a Designs eSearch database covering current and pending designs, and placed copies of its Designs Journal since April 2007 on the web. Both are accessible at http://www.ipos.gov.sg/leftNav/des/ eDesigns.htm. Switzerland has shut down its national patent document download server on the grounds that all the documents are available through Esp@cenetÒ. It remains to be seen if any other nations will decide that it is no longer necessary to provide such a service. I wonder if there are any Swiss patent documents too long to be downloaded in one go from Esp@cenetÒ? Taiwan trade marks can be searched in English by mark text or number, but not proprietor, at http:// tipo.hinet.net/TIPO_DRE/BasicIPO.html. Note that trade marks consisting entirely of Chinese characters cannot be searched on this page, although there is apparently a database interface for this on the Chinese-language web site. A new historical database has been created by third parties for USA patents. The Wyoming State Library’s patent and trademark department has a number of historical US patent databases of local interest at http:// will.state.wy.us/sis/ptdl/index.html, as well as a database of all US patents which refer to changes of name by applicants. This is presumably provided mainly as a potential source for family history research, but also provides interesting testimony to the gradual Anglicisation of the culture of mainland European immigrants to the USA. The IP Service of Venezuela has reorganised its free web database offering. Patents and designs can be searched at http://www.sapi.gob.ve/vpat/index_patentec_n.php. The database appears to contain bibliographic details of
News on patent, trademark and design databases / World Patent Information 30 (2008) 73–75
registrations dating back to the early 1970s. Full documents are available in pdf format for many documents published from 2000 on and a few from the 1990s. Currently-valid trade marks can be searched by mark text only at http://www.sapi.gob.ve/consulta/indexbt_n.php and the status of patents and trade marks can be searched by number only at http://www.sapi.gob.ve/consulta/ indexmp_n.php. All three databases are Spanish-language only. An interesting new phenomenon is the collection of Global IP Scorecards created by the blogging patent attorney Duncan Bucknell at http://duncanbucknell.com/ scorecards/. These attempt to summarise the current state of play in well-known IP legal battles by individual jurisdiction. Scorecards created so far deal with the Eli Lilly vs. Teva and Dr Reddy’s dispute over Zyprexa; the dispute between Anheuser-Busch and Budejovicky´ Budvar over the right to use the "Budweiser" brand name; and the Pfizer vs. Ranbaxy patent dispute over Lipitor. Further scorecards dealing with general issues rather than specific legal battles include the legality under various countries’ trade mark law of the use of other people’s badges of origin as meta tags or paid search keywords to attract people to one’s own website, and the use of the TRIPS provisions for
75
compulsory licensing of socially-vital pharmaceuticals by developing nations. And finally, in the area of promising potential rather than actual new developments, Dr Jeremy Phillips of Queen Mary and Westfield College has announced, on his IPKat blog, a proposal for a comprehensive wiki on UK intellectual property law, freely readable by the public but edited by subject experts. Those interested should view his blog posts at http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2007/07/room6-manifesto-wiki-vision-for-future.html and http:// ipkitten.blogspot.com/2007/08/ip-wiki-and-room-6-manifesto-latest.html, or the wiki proposal itself at http:// ipdailyupdate.pbwiki.com/Draft-proposal-for-an-IP-Lawwiki. Any readers who see themselves as potential editors are invited to contact him. As before, links in this column will be added to the British Library links page at http://www.bl.uk/patents. Philip Eagle The British Library Business and Intellectual Property Centre 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB, UK E-mail address: [email protected]