icic 2014 how the european patent office uses asian documentation
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Asian Documentation
Key facts and Figures
December 2013
Index
1. Asian Filings
2. EPO actively focusing on Asian prior art
3. Comprehensive Asian documentation coverage
4. Classification schemes
5. State of the art search tools
6. Fit-for purpose translation tools
7. Access to the work done by the Asian offices
8. Dedicated training and support
9. Comprehensive prior art search
10. EPO committed to maintaining top quality
In 2013:
More than 1.4 million
patent applications
were filed in China,
Japan and Korea
Asian filings
While the number of domestic patent applications in China has surged in the
last decade, the number of these having a family member in an official EPO
language has fallen from 60% in 2001 to less than 30% in 2011
Asian filings (2/2)
Source: PDQM
Sharp decrease of
Chinese publications
with a family member
in EN, DE or FR
EPO actively focusing on Asian prior art
• Considering the rapid increase in Asian prior art, the EPO has been working on numerous developments:
– Data acquisition
– Classification
– Search and documentation tools
– Translation options
– Access to the work done by the Asian Offices
– Examiner training
Comprehensive Asian documentation coverage (1/4)
• Almost 100% coverage of
bibliographic and image patent
data for the major Asian
countries
• Coverage similarly
comprehensive for English-
language abstracts (China:
patents and utility models;
Japan and Korea: patents only)
Origin Number of
documents Time coverage
China 8.6 million complete from
1985
Japan 22.5 million
from 1931
(complete from
ca. 1970)
Korea 4.4 million complete from ca.
1978
Comprehensive Asian documentation coverage (2/4)
• In English full text (description and claims) bulk translated
– Chinese patent publications and utility models
• 6.0 million documents from 1985-2012
– Japanese patent publications
• 7.3 million documents from 1998 onwards
– Korean patent publications
• 1.3 million documents from 2008 onwards
Comprehensive Asian documentation coverage (3/4)
• Integrated access to the world's largest citation database
• Japan
– 4.1 million citing JP publications
– 13.5 million cited patents
• Korea
– 0.5 million citing KR publications
– 1.4 million cited patents
• China
– 0.9 million citing CN publications
Comprehensive Asian documentation coverage (4/4)
• Access to Asian Non Patent Literature (NPL) is being enhanced
– Agreement between EPO and East View enables examiners to
download Chinese NPL from CNKI
– CNKI includes more than 25 million articles
• Asian NPL is now a priority of the EPO which is currently assessing
the various Asian NPL portals.
Breakdown of documentation coverage per technical area
• Few areas are now immune from the influx of Asian documentation
• Can be accessed field by field
• Shows the make up of documentation in each technical field
• Shows the historical evolution over time
• Limiting to CPC (EC) can cut out many documents
EC/CPC Classification or only IC
Classified in IC - Country of origin
Historical Evolution of the Documents in the Field
Classification schemes
• Classification schemes used by EPO examiners:
– Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC)
– International Patent Classification (IPC)
– FI / F-term system from Japan
>> SIPO and KIPO have agreed to classify in CPC, facilitating
the access to Korean and Chinese documentation
State of the art search tools (1/2)
Integrated
Full text search
• Classes
• Free query
• Keywords
• Selection of
databases
State of the art search tools (2/2)
• Viewing documents retrieved by family
• Direct access to various translation possibilities
• Direct access to the file wrapper of the Asian Offices
Fit-for-purpose translation tools (1/2)
• Machine translation
• Human assisted machine translation
• Machine translation manually corrected for CN, JP, KR, RU
and TW documents
• Available in 2/3 days
• Translations done by the Asian Patent Expert Group
• For short passages only
• Examiner experts in Chinese, Japanese and Korean
• Full human translation (Legal translation)
Fit-for-purpose translation tools (2/2)
Examiners select the
translation which best
fits intended purpose
Access to the work done by the Asian offices (1/3)
• Art. 124, Rule 141 EPC: Prior art information
– Applicants are requested to provide the results of any search on
corresponding national or regional applications
• Citations extracted from patent publications
• Citations provided on a monthly basis by various offices (JP and KR)
– Preparations developed to automatically retrieve cited documents
by other patent offices
Access to the work done by the Asian offices (2/3)
• Direct Access to File wrappers of JPO, KIPO and SIPO via DI+
• Machine translated communications
Access to the work done by the Asian offices (3/3)
Common citation Document
Dedicated training and support (1/3)
• Asian Patent Expert Group (APEG)
– Network of representatives in each technical field
• Disseminates information on Asian matters
• Trains examiners
– Language expert groups
• Assist examiners with Chinese, Japanese and Korean
documents
Dedicated training and support (2/3)
• Asia Event with presentations on:
– Asian translations, various options for various needs
– Accessing the work done by JPO, KIPO, and SIPO
– Asian patent information: EPO database content
– Asian Non-Patent Literature
• Mandatory training for all examiners on Asian documentation
– Latest trend in Asian filings
• General view
• Technical field-specific view (preparation doctrends)
– Latest tool development
Dedicated training and support (3/3)
Practical Guidelines on Asian documentation
distributed to all examiners
• Deferred examination:
– JPO: 3 years
– KIPO: 5 years
– SIPO: 3 years
JPO KIPO SIPO
Clarity Art. 36(6) Art. 42(4) Art. 26
Novelty Art. 29(1) Art. 29(1) Art. 22(1)
Inventive Step Art. 29(2) Art. 29(2) Art. 22(2)
Comprehensive prior art search (1/3)
Asia Event
2 hour training
Guidelines on
Asian documentation
The consultation of Asian documents by EPO examiners is increasing rapidly
Comprehensive prior art search (2/3)
21% of the patents cited in EPO search reports in 2013 had an Asian priority
Comprehensive prior art search (3/3)
2013 compared to 2012
- almost 30% increase in patent citations with a Chinese priority
- almost 20% increase in patent citations with a Korean priority
Committed to maintaining quality
• Documentation, tools, translation options, training and knowledge of
Asian documentation is revolutionising the work of examiners
• The EPO will continue to improve its documentation coverage as it
grows and continue to develop tools for efficiently searching, retrieving
and assessing the Asian documentation
• The EPO comprehensively addresses the challenges posed by the
rapid explosion in Asian documentation
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