For many years, Austria’s lacking innovative power was criticised by many. That has now come to an end, also officially: according to the EU Commission’s innovative indicator 2008, Austria has caught up heavily with regard to innovation and is now on position six within the EU for the very first time. As a result, Austria now takes up its place behind the leading group including Sweden, Finland, Germany, Denmark and Great Britain. The global leader is still Switzerland. But one factor of uncertainty remains: Austria has not been left out by the economic crisis. The forecasts by the research economists are continuously adjusted downwards.
However, one point remains clear, especially in this crisis: research and development form the basis for economic recovery. Investments in the future are therefore ever more important. This economic success can only be ensured with appropriate legal protection. Monopolistic temporary property rights offer an effective protection against smart competitors and shady copycats. Offering this protection is the mandate of the Austrian Patent Office.
The Austrian Patent Office is the national Centre of Excellence which provides the protection for inventions needed for the legitimate safeguarding of your interests, regardless of the levels involved. It is true that the central form of protection is the patent, but the modern business world also requires other forms of safeguarding new developments. In line with this, we also enable utility models and protection certificates to be applied for in Austria, as well as providing the protection of trademarks and designs.
There is nowhere else in Austria which offers such a comprehensive range of know-how when it comes to commercial legal protection. The Patent Office is home to 207 experts, most of them technical specialists and legal experts, who are dedicated to the securing and protection of Austrian entrepreneurial interests. They investigate every individual case, applying the most stringent quality criteria, to make sure that your products really are provided with the best possible protection.
As a Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) Authority, the Austrian Patent Office is amongst the best centres for the protection of intellectual property worldwide, and thus so since 1979. Within our function as an international search and examination authority, we prepare more than 1,000 international examination reports annually. As the national registration office, we receive an average of 3,500 applications of inventions, 8,000 trademark and 1,000 design applications per year.
Innovations are indispensable, both in knowledge-based manufacturing companies as well as in service companies. The focus in matters related to research grants is also clear, since way above 90 percent of all Austrian companies are small and medium-sized enterprises.
The conversion of innovative power into economic power is the declared target. In contrast to other industrial nations, many Austrian companies are still too little aware of the opportunities of industrial property protection. For this reason, the Austrian Patent Office organised a road show through individual federal provinces during the last year. Following the launch in Vienna, it was the turn of Tyrol, Upper Austria and Styria. Also onboard was “INNOVNATION”, an exhibition by the Austrian Patent Office with historic and highly topical inventions. The exhibits demonstrated that research and development is pursued at the highest level in Austria and that this way, internationally successful products are created again and again.
This is a question that keeps not only prospective inventors, but also previously successful companies busy. Whilst the evaluation and thus the determination of monetary values is established already in the area of trademarks, brands and logos, and can be taken from periodic trademark rankings, the matter looks comparatively gloomy in the case of inventions. Currently, it is in many cases still just corporeal property that has a value. This represents a problem for young inventors in particular, when it comes to setting up capital for the implementation of their ideas. In future, banks should also be able to rate and estimate intellectual property. In this respect, the Patent Office will be able to provide its know-how in an even better way in future.
You want to know, whether it is worth investing in a specific invention? The IPscore programme by the European Patent Office provides you with important criteria for this purpose. The Austrian Patent Office supports you in the use of the IPscore programme, using which the legal status, the technology, financial issues, market conditions and the strategy can be queried and appraised. On the basis of your replies to a list of questions, IPscore determines the opportunities and risks of an innovation. It shows clearly where the technology to be evaluated has its strengths and its weaknesses. And in addition (depending on the grade of your economic input parameters), it even determines the potential capital value of your innovation. In any case, a first step to an upvaluation of intellectual property in front of potential financiers was achieved in this way.
The system has been in place for ten years already, however decisive improvements were achieved in 2008. The talk is about esp@cenet, a patent search system for the public. Last year, the network was placed on a modern platform. This way, it is now possible to publish additional information that is not available on the European counterpart, the esp@cenet server of the European Patent Office. Besides, the Austrian server was adapted to the new EPTOS structure.
In detail: the database comprises all AT A and B documents as well as the AT utility models (U) from 1995 until today. In addition to the facsimiles, the German summaries are also added successively in a searchable format. Thanks to EPTOS, the user interface provides more sophisticated search options than before: this includes the search using date fields, the search using a random number of search terms, or the full text search. Furthermore, the flexible EPTOS structure allows for the implementation of individual technical developments, in order to meet the specific usage profiles and demands of the users in Austria.
The search using esp@cenet is presented by the Austrian Patent Office within the scope of free basic seminars ("Gewerbliche Schutzrechte im Überblick" [Overview of industrial Property Rights]).
Within the scope of the workshops on patent searching, the participants are given the opportunity to search themselves using esp@cenet under the guidance of experienced patent examiners.
The Austrian Patent Office is distinguished by highest quality standards, making it one of currently only 13 Patent Offices worldwide that is recognised as an International Research and Examination Authority by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). Every report is reviewed by at least two internal experts, and our Quality Management Board conducts random inspections and communicates any recommendations for improvement to the staff. An extensive range of training courses for our internal experts is an essential element of our success strategy, allowing our staff members to acquire knowledge and skills not only internally, but also with patent offices in other countries. These standards are highly acknowledged, as is shown by the Austrian Patent Office's participation - as only one of four patent offices, the others being the German, Danish and English Patent Offices - in the so-called Utilisation Pilot Project (UPP) within the scope of the European patent network. The aim of this project is to achieve a further quality improvement and more international competence through an exchange programme for auditors and an exchange of best practices. To make the procedures and their interactions more transparent and applications more promising, guidelines for applicants are available from the Patent Office. The enhancement of quality awareness through specific quality management is our contribution towards increased customer satisfaction.
Notwithstanding the extreme conscientiousness that is an integral part of the inspection process, companies naturally need their applications and registrations to be processed as quickly as possible. The Austrian Patent Office strives continually to speed up its procedures without impairing the quality of its decisions.
Notwithstanding the continuously high number of trademark applications, quick and unbureaucratic registration without further communication between the applicant and the authority is possible for almost half of all applications. In recent years, the time required for a trademark registration in Austria has been reduced massively. In the inventions sector, the participation by the Austrian Patent Office as one of four members in the Utilisation Pilot Project fixed in 2006 guarantees rapid processing: Within the scope of the pilot project, it was possible to speed up the search for European patents significantly. In 2006 the procedure still took as long as up to ten months, whereas now the international search results are available within 3 to 6 months.
The buzzwords are well-known: Globalization, internationalization, networking of the economy. But as a small or medium-sized company, how does one go about protecting one's interests on the international stage? We also act as attorneys with international experience on behalf of our customers. Furthermore, the Patent Office represents Austria in a number of international institutions, as well as helping in the handling of individual projects.
In the area of commercial legal protection, we co-operate mainly with three central international associations: The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a UNO organization, the European Patent Organization (EPO), and the Harmonization Office in the Internal Market (HABM/OHIM). As well as this, excellent contacts are of course maintained with the individual national patent offices, which offer the best possible legal framework for your protective rights by way of a large number of bilateral and multilateral agreements and treaties.
As an internationally recognised PCT authority, the Austrian Patent Office has formed part of the “Champions League” since 1979. We are amongst the best centres for the protection of intellectual property worldwide. How that is determined? The “World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)” examines the qualification of individual patent offices and grants the best ones the status as a PCT authority. This title exists only 13 times worldwide, and Vienna belongs to the circle. Within its role as an international search and examination authority, the Austrian Patent Office prepares more than 1000 examination reports annually, mainly for Korea, Singapore, India, Brazil and South Africa.
In 2008, the Austrian Patent Office entered into a close cooperation with the Hungarian Patent Office within the scope of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). Moreover, the axis Budapest-Vienna has already been notified by the WIPO. With immediate effect, the Hungarians are officially permitted to participate in the status of the Austrian Patent Office.
For Austria, this close connection with our Hungarian neighbours provides two advantages in one go: in June 2008, for one, the EU decided that Budapest was to receive the contract for the “European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)”. The EIT will become the centre of European innovation and with that be decisive for future European strategies in matters related to research and development. With the strong connection to the Hungarians, Austria is also provided with many benefits out of this centre.
And there is another thing on the part of the assets: thanks to the Hungarian Patent Office, the group of working languages is extended by Russian and Hungarian. This way, two essential and central languages of the future are covered as of now.
Aside from the close cooperation with the Hungarian Patent Office, the Austrian Patent Office was also involved in other exciting international projects with other patent offices in the area of industrial property protection:
The initiative “InnovAcess” provides small and medium-sized enterprises as well as universities with information on intellectual property and industrial property protection within the country and abroad. This also includes background information as well as information with regard to procedures and costs in the member states of the EU. The consortium running the project consists of national patent offices of the European Union, the European Patent Office and the Office for Harmonisation on the Internal Market.
The project eMAGE attempts to lay out the often complicated world of trademark and design laws in a more customer friendly way. The platform provides laymen in the area of trademark and designs with the option of carrying out a so-called “natural language” search. What does that mean? The customer enters colloquial terms – and the system identifies the technical terms and then searches for registered trademarks and designs in several languages. This “natural language” search is supplemented by a quick image similarity search. Aside from the national patent offices of Austria, Hungary, Portugal and the Czech Republic, the Chamber of Commerce of Marseille, for example, is also represented in the consortium.
The so-called “Utilisation Pilot Project” (UPP) is an international pilot project that is meant to promote the mutual acceptance of search results between different patent offices and thereby assist in the reduction of patent issuance costs at the European Patent Office. Currently, it is often so that different patent offices perform duplicate searches and as a result also more costs incur for the customers. The patent offices of Denmark, Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom want to change that and increase the efficiency and customer friendliness. The project is promoted explicitly by the European Patent Office and planned to be continued in 2009 as well.
The business location Austria has a high-quality competence centre in matters of international industrial property rights with the Austrian Patent Office. And this positioning is also beneficial for Austrian companies: With more than 1250 applications processed by us as the authority of origin and forwarded to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), a new record was broken. Austria is thus once again one of the Top Ten users of the Madrid System, and is ahead of states such as Great Britain, Spain or Japan. An increasing number of applicants (about 150) have also used their Austrian application or trademark as a basis for a European Community designation and thus for obtaining an international Community trademark, which is slightly cheaper by comparison with direct registration in Alicante.
Regarding the number of designations filed with the WIPO for Austria, there was a slight decrease in keeping with an international trend. Especially multinational corporate groups tend to apply increasingly for protection in the whole Community and do without national designations.
With more than 10,000 renewals of international trademarks, a historical record level was reached, and that is also something to be proud of internationally: With this quota, Austria is in the top 4 of the renewal ranking for all IR trademarks, together with the Benelux states, Switzerland and Italy.
In 2008, a real breakthrough was achieved in the area of international trademark registration. After many years of debate, the repeal of the so-called “safeguard clause” was resolved. The repeal thereof and a few other amendments have simplified the system of international trademark registration and thereby made it more attractive. Now, what does that mean in detail? Since 1 September 2008, a free choice can now be made between French and English as the procedural language and as of late, the entrance criteria (the reference criteria to the “home authority”, namely company seat, place of residence or citizenship) can now be used alternatively. Further: for MMA/MMP contractors, applications for international trademark registration may also be carried out already on the basis of a submitted application for a national trademark (basic registration), and not just on the basis of a previously registered national trademark alone. In addition, retrospective nominations as well as applications for renunciation or cancellation may be submitted to the international office of the WIPO from now on. Any provisional refusal of protection are now communicated already by the Austrian Patent Office between the 8th and 9th month after completed international registration, by which many applicants’ wish to be informed as soon as possible about any provisional refusal of protection was further complied with.
The medical insight that children need special medicinal products is gaining increasing acceptance. Very often, the dosage alone is not the only way in which they should differ from products for adults. As a reaction to this fact, EC Regulation No. 1901/2006 on medicinal products for paediatric use and the amendment to the Act on Supplementary Protection Certificates now allow for the protection of medicinal products for children to be extended by a further 6 months. This aims to provide an incentive for the development of high-quality and ethically acceptable medicinal products for the treatment of children.
For a long time, the road to a European Community patent appeared to be blocked. However, with ratification of the London Agreement by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, this initiative that is so important for the European economy has started to move again. As a result, patents will also be recognised in languages other than French. After ratification by the French Parliament, the London Agreement came into force as of 1 May 2008. This will lead to a significant relief of the economy in future. The reason is simply explained: the costs for translations into all EU languages, which were partially exorbitant in the past, will be reduced by the cut to just three required languages.
The efforts for the establishment of a Community patent were intensified in 2008. This way, countries like Austria are trying to comply with a longstanding request of the European economy and create a patent system that is valid for the entire EU. The Community patent should be an efficient and flexible instrument at an affordable price. The following gap to the current system would be closed: so far, it was not possible to obtain automatic protection in all EU member states with a single registration upon granting of the patent. The idea is not to create any new structures, but rather more use synergy effects for the registration and granting of such a new patent right. The normal procedure up to the grant of the patent is synchronised with the procedure for the grant of a European patent and implemented by the European Patent Office. Since a central patent court is a necessary prerequisite for the enforcement of such a new legal title, the responsible EU Council Working Group has been working on both issues in parallel since May 2007.
With an end to the language conflict in sight, there may well be a new opportunity now to revive the European Patent Office's idea of a central patent court.
So far, there was no uniform court system either for European patents under the European Patent Convention (EPC), nor for the Community patents to be expected in the future. The establishment of a central and uniform court system would help in particular to avoid the duplication of structures. Although we have moved one step closer to the Community patent with ratification of the London Agreement, it still remains unclear when the Community patent will become reality. Therefore the issue of a uniform court system has an impact only on EPC patents for the time being and will not also have to be applied for Community patents until at a later stage. The responsible EU Council Working Group has certainly been working hard to create such a court system since May 2007.
The Office for Harmonisation on the Internal Market (OHIM) was established more than ten years ago and the high number of registrations have exceeded the original expectations by far. As a result it faces the rather unusual problem of a consistent increase in surplus revenues - despite a massive reduction of fees only recently. In 2006, a strategic debate on the future fees policy and the closely interwoven balance of European protection right systems at the national and Community level was started. As an immediate measure, a further reduction in fees and a study to evaluate how the Community trademark system functions are to be developed. This study should be available in autumn 2009. A fundamental change in the system of distributing the renewal fees for Community trademarks is also being planned as a major item of this redesign.
In this respect Austria has taken the position that those activities at the national and Community level that have not been taken into consideration yet and that have been shown to contribute towards the functioning and success of the system should be taken into consideration, thus scrutinising the cost truth of the whole system. It is planned that the cooperation activities will be processed via the “Cooperation Fund” as of 2010.
The foundation was laid during the Austrian EU Presidency in 2006, and as of 2008 it has become a reality: The link between the Office for Harmonisation on the Internal Market (OHIM) and the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Deposit of Industrial Designs, which is managed by the WIPO, has been implemented. Due to the EU declaration of accession with the WIPO, it is now also possible for Austrian applicants to access the Hague System via the EU since the beginning of the year 2008, and to obtain protection in other contractual partner states.
For many years, the EU Commission has been planning to amend the Directive governing designs and models (98/71/EC). And the so-called Repair Clause has been under heavy debate just as long. A proposal was submitted already five years ago: it provides for a restriction of the design protection for all visible repair and spare parts. Also in 2008, supporters and opponents of the proposal were nearly balanced out again: at the beginning of this year and at a Council Working Group level, the Slovenian Council Presidency informed about a vote on the introduction of a repair clause into the Directive on designs that had been carried out by the European Parliament. Although this was accepted with recommendations for amendment, such as on the introduction of a 5-year transition period, a blocking minority of countries, including France and Germany, nevertheless emphasized its continued disapproval.
In 2008, the EU intensified its initiatives against product piracy. The cornerstones are an increased international cooperation and an optimised coordination of national activities. In September 2008, the French Council Presidency presented conclusions on a global European plan for the fight against imitations and product piracy. Before that, the OECD had already pointed out that an information deficit, but also a data deficit could be determined in connection with product piracy. In future, it is planned that this deficit be rectified by a European monitoring office. Based on the text proposal by the Austrian Patent Office, Austria deposited its preference for immediate measures such as, for example, the further development of existing helpdesks. These should support European companies, in particular SMEs, in the enforcement of their rights in problem countries.
By January 2008, the decision was made for a 5 percent reduction in the PCT registration fees as well as for additional fee reductions for applicants from developing countries. This initiative was pushed also by many industrial countries. What is still missing for concrete implementation of this measure is a precise definition of which countries fall into the category of a “developing country”, particularly as the United Nations (UN) also do not have a uniform assessment catalogue.