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N. 6, Dec.2002 - Jan.2003
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 | IP & RTD: Articles
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The Patent Information Policy And Online Services Of The German Patent And Trade Mark Office
Dipl.-Ing. Berndt Tödte
Head of the Information Department
German Patent and Trade Mark Office, Munich |
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In its bid to meet its clients from all over the world less as a "classical office" and more as a "modern service provider", the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) has taken great steps forward recently. Contributing to this has been a modern patent information policy, as well as the rapid implementation of that policy by high-quality Internet services addressed to the global public.
On 30th July 2002, the DPMA announced on the occasion of a hearing that it committed itself to the support of innovation through its information products and services, and to giving universal access, for every purpose, to its raw data on all forms of intellectual property within its responsibility at low prices, that is to say, for the payment of administration costs. Administration costs are to be understood as the costs of data processing.
The entirety of the data services of the DPMA will soon be accessible to the clients in a very modern way: through the DPMA Web server, which will be in full operation from the beginning of 2003. Here, the weekly raw data of the Office on patents, utility models, trade marks and design patents will be provided for download to everyone on subscription. In order to use this service, only a standard contract (to guarantee the payment of the limit costs), which will be available online on the DPMA website (www.dpma.de), has to be concluded with the Office.
This service encourages, especially, small and medium-sized enterprises to set up their own information systems on the different forms of intellectual property on the basis of the official raw data. At the same time, the free-of-charge internet service DEPATISNet (www.depatisnet.de) is aimed at reducing barriers to the access to patent information. This is the Internet version of the DEPATIS (German Patent Information System) used internally by the DPMA, with which a large number (presently about 28 million) patent documents from all over the world are provided in searchable facsimile and text forms.
Among these documents are (among others) all German patent documents since 1877, all German utility models, all patent documents of the European Patent Office, all US patent documents since 1790, British, French and Austrian patent documents since 1920, and, of especial interest, millions of summaries in English of Japanese patent documents since 1976.
This all should enable inventors, constructors and researchers to gather information on patents in an easy way, and to enable them to start their innovative work at the point where the ingenuity of the "pre-inventors" - who was also innovative - ended.
In order to avoid bad and possibly very expensive surprises, every research and marketing idea should be preceded by detailed research of the patent background of the field of technology concerned. Here, it has to be discovered who deals with what kind of technology on the market, and what intellectual property rights are relevant to your own plans and ideas. For a long time, it was difficult to obtain reliable information on the legal aspects and procedural status of applications. This situation had been improved, as today all important patent offices provide access to their registers of registered rights and pending applications on the Internet, up to date and free of charge.
The service of this kind provided by the DPMA is called DPINFO. This service can be found at dpinfo.dpma.de. First-time users should expect to have to go through a simple self-registration procedure on the DPINFO Web site, confirmed within a few minutes by email.
Patent publications often enable businesses to gain insights into the marketing plans of competitors years ahead. The early knowledge of these plans can serve as a basis for one's own plans.
From an overview of the patent publications in one specialised field of technology, it can be seen which tendencies in research show major potential for the future, and which lines of enquiry have been more or less completed and are, therefore, not worth any more research.
As very many published patent applications - in Germany, around two thirds - never lead to patents, the information in these publications will often be free for use by everyone.
Also, less than 15% of the inventions patented in the US are patented in Europe. Therefore, the information in more than 85% of US patents are free for use by everyone in Europe. The detailed search of the US patent publications can often be worthwhile, because freely exploitable and ready to use solutions to certain technical problems can be found there, which otherwise could only be discovered by expensive research.
It is now possible for everyone to use patent information in order to gain advantages in competition and to improve their own chances on the market. This is why the DPMA services DEPATISnet and DPINFO are available. These services have already had a wide impact: every day, DEPATISnet sees 40 000 searches and more than 100 000 pages of documents download.
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