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1. Introduction.
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The Russian Agency for Patents and Trade Marks (Rospatent) is the sole body of federal executive authority entitled to grant, register and maintain the rights to inventions, utility models, industrial designs, trademarks, service marks, appellations of origin, or to register computer programs, databases and topographies of integrated circuits in the territory of Russia. It performs the functions of Russia's state patent office, including legal protection of computer programs, databases, and integrated circuits topographies.
In addition, in the Government Decree of April 12, 1999 Rospatent is charged with legislative improvements, international cooperation and liaisons with public organizations in the areas of copyright and associated rights of an interdepartmental nature, with the exception of illegal activity suppression in that area.
Rospatent consists of several structural elements:
In addition to the structural elements of the State Patent Office itself, listed above, Rospatent has a number of subordinate organizations that serve auxiliary functions. These include:
2. Main direction and the results of work of the Russian agency for patents and trade marks.
The last five years haven't been easy for Russia and for Rospatent specifically. Economic hardships faced by the country naturally affected the activity of inventors. The number of applications on inventions, utility models and industrial designs filed with Rospatent went down. Starting in 1998, however, the situation began improving. The 1999 figures allow us to say that the downward tendency in inventor activity has been reversed. The number of applications and of titles of protection issued for nearly all types of industrial property objects is steadily growing.
The statistics of the five years of Rospatent activity are presented in the tables below.
| Inventions | |||||
| Applications filed | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 |
| Total | 22202 | 23211 | 19992 | 21362 | 24659 |
| ��� Of these by:� | |||||
| Russian applicants | 17551 | 18014 | 15106 | 16454 | 19900 |
| ������� Foreign applicants | 4651 | 5197 | 4886 | 4908 | 4759 |
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����������������� Of these: near abroad |
407 | 387 | 422 | ||
| ����������� via the PCT procedure | 3228 | 3427 | 3309 | ||
| Patents granted | |||||
| Total | 31556 | 33574 | 45975 | 23315 | 19508 |
| Of these to: | |||||
| ��� Russian patent owners | 20861 | 16489 | 25644 | 19215 | 15362 |
| ���� Foreign patent owners | 4772 | 3189 | 4048 | 4100 | 4146 |
| ����������� Of these: near abroad | 355 | ||||
| Utility models | |||||
| Applications filed | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 |
| Total | 2356 | 2723 | 3444 | ||
| Of these by: | |||||
| ���� Russian applicants | 2304 | 2675 | 3379 | ||
| ���� Foreign applicants, of these: | 52 | 48 | 65 | ||
| ��near abroad | 34 | ||||
| Certificates issued | |||||
| Total | 1207 | 1968 | 2339 | 3162 | 3459 |
| Of these by: | |||||
| ���� Russian applicants | 1198 | 1933 | 2296 | 3096 | 3386 |
| ���� Foreign applicants, of these: | 9 | 35 | 43 | 66 | 73 |
| near abroad | 31 | ||||
| Industrial designs | |||||
| Applications filed | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 |
| Total | 1370 | 1266 | 1302 | 1509 | 1585 |
| Of these by: | |||||
| ���� Russian applicants | 1165 | 994 | 929 | 1076 | 1274 |
| ���� Foreign applicants, of these: | 205 | 272 | 373 | 433 | 311 |
| �����near abroad | 55 | ||||
Patents granted |
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| Total | 1084 | 1136 | 937 | 964 | 1655 |
| Trademarks | |||||
| Applications filed | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 |
| Total, | 21403 | 24127 | 28157 | 28581 | 28995 |
| including under the Madrid Agreement | 7331 | ||||
| ��� Of these by: | |||||
| ������� Russian applicants | 11829 | 13513 | 15998 | 15583 | 18254 |
| ������� Foreign applicants, including: | 9574 | 10614 | 12159 | 12998 | 10741 |
| near abroad | 387 | ||||
| Trademarks registered | 17701 | 19507 | |||
| including under the Madrid Agreement | 6574 | ||||
| ��� Of these on applications by: | |||||
| ������� Russian applicants | 7791 | 9181 | |||
| ������� Foreign applicants | 9910 | 10326 | |||
| �������������� including: near abroad | 178 | ||||
| Computer programs, databases, topograghies of microcircuits | |||||
| Number of objects registered | 1995 | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 |
| Total number registered, including: | 1189 | ||||
| Computer programs | 484 | 583 | 721 | 749 | 1016 |
| Databases | 41 | 49 | 91 | 78 | 161 |
| Microcircuit topographies | 8 | 4 | 3 | 8 | 12 |
During the last five years Rospatent did a lot towards further development of the legislative and normative base of the legal protection of industrial property. Drafts of new Federal laws on industrial property prepared for the Government take into consideration changes in Russian federation laws that took place since the Patent Law and the RF Law "On Trademarks, Service Marks and Appellations of Origin" came into effect. Legislation development work is also connected to plans for Russia to accede to new international agreements.
Organizational and technological processes of the Office are also undergoing improvement. The average length of processing time for applications for industrial property objects is decreasing, and official publications are issued in a much more timely fashion. Presently the official information on registered objects comes out 3 months after the decision to grant a patent or certificate.
The State Fund of Patent Documentation (SPF) is continuing its development and growth as part of Russia's national resource of scientific and technical information. Presently SPF contains approximately 22 million units of foreign and domestic patent documentation (descriptions of inventions to patents and applications, literature on industrial designs, literature on patent laws, normative and methodical literature, referential literature) on various types of media. Both the structure of the fund and the methods of patent information services it provides change according to the requirements of the times.
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The main source for the acquisition and replenishment by foreign materials for the library is the international exchange of patent documentation. Presently Rospatent participates in the exchange with patent authorities of 57 countries, six international organizations, and the "Dervent" information company.
Considerable attention is paid to the implementation of new information technologies and computerization of the office.
The number of automated workstations in the Office's local computer network is constantly increasing. Ten servers support about 400 PCs.
At this time Rospatent has a functioning yet constantly developing automated systems to process applications for invention and utility model patents. The automated systems for trademarks and industrial designs, in addition to document processing, are also capable of some information search functions.
Work is under way to render the application materials on inventions and utility models into the electronic form, and also to retrospectively scan domestic patent documents.
The processes of preparing official publications and of printing the title pages of utility model documentation, the State Register pages, titles of protection for inventions and utility models have been fully automated.
Work is under way to implement see-through technologies of automated processing of application documents and their preparation for publications, and to analyze the feasibility of introducing the option of electronic application filing.
Network technologies is the new direction in the computerization of Rospatent.
Rospatent established a search system for Russian patent documents in 1998. The system is oriented towards the Internet-Intranet architecture. Internal users access the system via the local Intranet, and external users do so via the Internet (through the Rospatent website). The databases that are part of the search system contain Russian patent documents published since 1994 (patents, applications for inventions, utility model certificates) with text (bibliographies, abstracts, claims, descriptions), and graphics (drawings, tables, mathematical and chemical formulae), as well as the trademarks of the Russian federation since 1991. Quarterly renewal of the DB of abstracts, of patents and trademark DB, and monthly renewal of the full-text patent DB has been organized. The search system permits information searches in large stores of loosely structured information (by texts of abstracts, titles, claims, descriptions) in either Russian or English (in appropriate parts of the DB) and bibliographic data, and allows viewing and copying of the documents thus found. Search functions available to internal users are considerably more extensive than those accessible from the outside. They include fuzzy search, search with the use of linguistic processors and so on.
A bilingual (Russian and English language) Rospatent website at http://www.rupto.ru opened in 1988. The site's pages contain information on the structure of the Agency, the main directions of its activity, texts of normative and legislative acts, and so forth. In addition to general information Internet users are able to freely access descriptions of Russian invention and their abstracts, in Russian and English, published since 1994.
One of the important achievements in 1999 was the completion of the preparatory phase of complex automation of Russia's State Patent Office. The project will be implemented in the period from 2000 to 2003. The Government of the Russian Federation has resolved the financial issues with regard to this project.
The fastest and most complete source of information on industrial property applications and registrations are the Official Bulletins of Rospatent:
Full invention descriptions are published for all the invention patents granted, and title pages of descriptions are published for all utility model certificates.
All the information on inventions and trademarks contained in the official publications of Rospatent is also released on compact optical disks (CD-ROMs), in which case individual user requests may be taken into account during the recording of machine-readable databases. The DBs thus supplied are accompanied by automated information search systems. In order to make working with large volumes of official information easier for users, a referential search system in the form of traditional paper-based indexes and bibliographical DBs on CD-ROMs is also available, and it includes all the inventions registered in the USSR and Russia starting from 1924.
Complex tools for working with the Russian collection of CD-ROMs were developed in 1998. This scalable solution is capable of both individual and multi-user work with disk arrays, including by remote access. The system allows fast and effective search in all bibliographic fields, and viewing and printing of both title pages and full invention descriptions. It can be integrated into corporate networks of large enterprises or groups of these.
The InPC, newly established as part of Rospatent, publishes subject-related collections such as "The Inventions Worldwide" (containing information in Russian on abstracts of inventions published in the official bulletins of WIPO, EPO, Britain, Germany, the USA, France, Switzerland, and Japan), as well as "Industrial Designs of Foreign Countries". In cooperation with FIIP, InPC prepares and publishes materials on the international classification of inventions, industrial designs, and trademarks.
3. Development of the international relations of the Russian Patent Office
Rospatent represents the Russian Federation in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and participates in 14 out of 21 agreements on intellectual property that are administrated by WIPO. Rospatent is engaged in several WIPO projects.
According to a bilateral agreement with the International Bureau of WIPO, Rospatent performs the functions of an International Searching Authority and an International Preliminary Examining Authority, i.e. it conducts international patent searches and preliminary examination of international applications for applicants from a number of countries. The number of such applications and of international searches conducted by Rospatent is constantly rising.
International registration of trademarks is performed under the terms of the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks and the related Protocol; proposals are being prepared on improving the international classification of inventions and on the development of international standards regarding patent documentation and information; patent searches and searches to determine the state of the art are performed free of charge in response to requests of the developing countries (125 requests annually). Rospatent experts actively participate in conferences, seminars and forums on intellectual property held by WIPO in cooperation with patent offices of several other countries.
One of the most promising directions in Rospatent's international collaboration is its activity in the area of computerization and within the framework of new information policies of WIPO based on the Working Program of the WIPO Standing Committee on Information Technologies (SCIT). Rospatent, as an International Searching Authority and International Preliminary Examining Authority, is among the eight offices which WIPO plans to include into its high capacity network.
The visit by the Director General of WIPO, Dr. Kamil Idris, to Russia in response to the invitation by the Russian Federation government, and his talks and meetings with the Russian Prime Minister, other high officials of the Russian Federation, and the management of Rospatent became the key event of 1999. The results of these talks were the decisions to prepare the Program of WIPO support for the Russian Federation, and to hold a yearly forum in Rospatent in Moscow for the benefit of CIS countries and other interested states. The first such Forum is planned for October 2000.
Active collaboration exists between Rospatent and the European Patent Office (EPO).
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Collaboration with the patent offices of Austria, Germany, China, the Republic of Korea, Turkey, France and other countries is steadily developing.
Rospatent views collaboration with CIS countries and with the Eurasian Patent Office also as important.
The Russian Federation has also signed such multilateral agreements as the Agreement on the Measures Concerning the Protection of Industrial Property and the Establishment of an Interstate Council on the Protection of Industrial Property (March 12, 1993), and the Eurasian Patent Convention (September 9, 1994). The following Agreements were also signed and presently are processed by the State system: "On mutual recognition of benefits and guarantees for the veterans and invalids of the Great Patriotic War, the participants of military actions on the territory of other states, and families of departed soldiers" (April 15, 1994), "On the measures to prevent the use of false trademarks and geographic indications", and "On mutual security of interstate secrets in the field of Industrial Property " (June 4, 1999).
Bilateral intergovernmental Agreements on collaboration in the area of industrial property protection between the Russian Federation and seven countries of the region (Republic of Azerbaijan, Republic of Armenia, Republic of Belarus, Republic of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, the Ukraine, and Republic of Uzbekistan) have been signed and put into force. Work is under way to develop similar agreements with Tajikistan, Georgia, and Turkmenistan, and drafts of intergovernmental agreements have been directed to their patent offices.
Agreements on the protection of industrial property have been signed between Rospatent and the State Agency of Industrial Property Protection of the Republic of Moldova. Inter-departmental agreements on collaboration in legal protection of computer programs, databases and the topographies of integrated circuits between Rospatent and patent offices of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyz Republic, and the Committee for Copyright and Related Rights of the Republic of Belarus have also been signed.
Under the terms of general agreements treaties between FIIP and patent offices of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan , Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Belarus have been signed. Patent documentation is regularly exchanged with nine patent offices of the region.
In 1998 an agreement was signed between Rospatent and the Eurasian Patent Office on collaboration in the area of legal protection of inventions.
Rospatent is also engaged in projects by the Interstate Council on the Protection of Industrial Property (ISC).
One significant project presently carried out by the Interstate Council is the development of a CD-ROM on CIS countries. This EPO-assisted project aims at the development of a resource on patent information containing bibliography and abstracts in Russian and English, plus full-text descriptions of inventions in the language of publication of the patent offices of CIS and EPO. Rospatent has been designated as project coordinator and the main performer. Presently, having completed a series of tasks to set up an information processing system of the CIS countries in several formats and having adapted the MIMOSA system for Cyrillic, Rospatent is fully ready to begin large-scale production of such joint CDs.
Rospatent is committed to the training and professional development both of its own staff and of experts from other CIS countries.
From 1995 to 1999 Rospatent organized 19 individualized on-the-job training courses on a variety of aspects of industrial property protection for 43 employees from 7 patent offices of CIS members. In addition, 20 employees of the patent offices of Belarus, the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, the Ukraine and Georgia participated in seminars and on-the-job training courses organized by Rospatent according to model training programs.
Representatives of patent offices of the CIS countries are participating in international seminars and conferences held or supported by Rospatent, including the annual Rospatent conference on current issues in the protection of intellectual property rights.
Taking into consideration the fact that the President of Russian Federation V.V. Putin named the development of collaboration with CIS countries among top priorities of Russian international politics, Rospatent intends to continue developing and strengthening its collaboration with the countries of the region.
Addresses, telephones, fax number, Web site etc.
#30, block 1 Berezhkovskaya Nab.
Moscow 121858
Russia
Telephones:
Director General: (095) 243-5509
Department of International Cooperation: (095) 240-6462, 240-5075, 240-3417
Fax: (095) 243-3337
E-mail: rospatent@rupto.ru, fips@rupto.ru
