Digest XIV - December 2017

At the end of 2017 there was lots of news to digest as companies put out their final press releases and round-ups at the end of the year. The blog started by covering 40 organisations in April 2016 and is now following over 60, using ds9 newstracker software. Organisations we track range from the very small start-up to multi-national businesses. We also now follow the major IP offices. Here is our summary of news published online during December 2017, split into two sections with the IP Office news, followed by commercial industry news. We are especially interested in new products and upgrades to existing databases and software particularly for patent search and analysis.

IPO Office News

Inter office meetings and agreements

The EPO and SIPO met in November and signed an ‘Agreement on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’, topics discussed included – ‘patent data exchange, CPC classification, examination capacity building, examination quality improving, patent re-examination, and patent information and cooperation between the IP five offices’ . Another agreement was signed by Brazil and the EPO forming a ‘PPH’, or fast track patent examination procedure for companies applying for patents for the same invention at the two offices.  The EPO also announced in December that EP patents can also now be validated in Tunisia. The agreement (originally signed in 2014) provides the same legal effects for a validated EP patent as a Tunisian patent and will be subject to Tunisian patent law. Tunisia joins the ‘extension states’ of Morocco and Moldova , where EP patents can already be validated within six months of the publication of a search report, or upon entering the European phase from an international application.

WIPO has estimated that 3.1 million patent applications were published in 2016, and that Chinese applicants were responsible for 98% of this growth. In 2016 over 230,000 applications were filed under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), according to the WIPO IP indicators 2017 publication. Trademark applications reached 7 million.  For the first time WIPO published information on ‘Geographical Indications’ which it collected from 54 countries, and will look at ways to continue to monitor this new form of IP which is administered and protected in a variety of ways.

Individual offices news

At the JPO the handling fee for international applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) will increase at by JPY300, where the receiving office was not the JPO. Fees also increased at the USPTO where the plan is to recover some costs of USPTO patent operations, such as Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) , and administration. The Swedish government announced the appointment of Peter Stromback as Director General of the Swedish Patent and Registration Office. There are now 50,000 Eurasian Patent Organization (EAPO) patents; a medal was awarded to Tsinghua University and Nuctech for this filing. The most active patent applicants are Novartis and Eli Lilly, but the USA files the largest number of applications, mostly using EAPO-ONLINE system.

Trademarks news from the Offices

The Annual TM5 meeting was held late in 2017. Officials from China, Europe, Korea, Japan, and the United States Trademark Office met to discuss progress on 13 existing projects and to agree on new projects. Some example of the cooperative projects are the: “Bad Faith Trademark Project, “Image Search Project” , “User Association Involvement Project”, and “Quality Management Project” . The next TM5 annual meeting will take place in South Korea. Trademark registrations are defined and searched within specific goods and services (Nice Agreement) . The 11th Edition of the International Classification of Goods and Services enters into force in January 2018, a Japanese version is also available courtesy of the JPO.

Research information: Academic, scientific, social sciences,
EBSCO introduced two new indexes this month – one for theologians and one for musicians. Rare music periodicals are now available through EBSCOs ‘Retrospective Index and Online Archive of Music Periodicals.’ (RIPM) . The collection, produced by Le Répertoire international de la presse musicale.   RIPM contains music related literature from 1760   to 1966. ATLAS PLUS from the American Theological Library Association, provides over 425 full-text journals on religion and theology in 16 different languages from over 30 countries.

Scientific Literature: Document Delivery
Very often when searching a scientific database which contains abstracts and indexing only we need to source the complete article. FIZ AutoDoc works with many document suppliers to provide copies of literature to STN (and other) customers. One supplier the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC) can now provide document deliveries via e-mail in plain PDF.   This makes it easier for readers to access their purchased copies. The plain PDF comes without encryption, and no additional software is needed either. Using these plain PDF copies may also mean a reduced price, as the CLA default copyright charge is applied.

Patent Information: Content
Patent information provider Gridlogics increased its full text patent coverage to an impressive 50 with data (of patent applications, and / or granted patent texts) from Cuba, Dominican Republic, Poland, Uruguay, Singapore, South Africa, and Italy to its PatSeer database.

Patent Information: Search
Each year Clarivate Analytics updates the manual codes used in its DWPI database. As well as helping searchers to identify patents filed in emerging or growing technology fields, these new codes are a good indicator of trending technology areas. 36 new Manual Codes have been added to the 2018 classification. These comprise 15 new CPI (Chemical Patents Index) codes and 21 new GMPI/EPI (General and Mechanical Patents Index and Electrical Engineering Patents Index) codes.   Look up DWPI Manual Codes on Clarivate’s website: https://clarivate.com/mcl/

M&A activity
RWS recently acquired Article One Partners (AOP) for $8million.   AOP provides an online crowdsourcing platform for clients to pose search questions to over 42,000 IP patent searchers.

People
Mike Morhardt is now Head of Global Sales at Clarivate Analytics. He joins from Forrester Research. Eric Schmidt will become a technical advisor at Google, a new non-Executive Chair is likely to be appointed.

Financials
Alphabet – owner of Google announced its 10Q data in December. Advertising revenue rose by $5.3 million globally this is for cost-per-click / cost per time viewed of an ad, and cost-per-impression.