Main achievements: facts and figures

The Eurasian Patent Office streamlined its process management to reduce the pendency period for applications in 2017.

The year in review saw the launch of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) on 1st October 2017 between the Eurasian Patent Office (EAPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) in addition to the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) Pilot Programme already underway between the EAPO and the Japan Patent Office (JPO).

Another step forward was a new term, extended through 1st August 2018, for the pilot programme for fast-track substantive examination of international invention applications entering the regional phase of examination at EAPO (EA-PCT).

Overall, 2,871 Eurasian patent granting decisions were taken in 2017, up 1.3 per cent over 2016.

Total application filings made via EAPO-ONLINE passed the 82 per cent mark. Also, the Office reported in 2017 more applications whose filers correspond with the EAPO solely in electronic form. Notably, those filings include applications filed earlier in hardcopy.

All the aforementioned efficiencies have enabled the Office to cut the average Eurasian application pendency times by 1.5 months.

The year under review saw further rollout of paperless workflow technologies to raise the overall level of applicants’ satisfaction.

The Eurasian Patent Office acceded to the WIPO Digital Access Service for Priority Documents (WIPO DAS) on 1st November 2017.

This means that applicants may thenceforth provide merely their application WIPO DAS access code to the Eurasian Office, rather than a certified copy of their prior application, in a situation where they claim priority for the Eurasian application based on the prior application added earlier by the applicant to the WIPO DAS digital library.

Eurasian applicants have the benefit of soliciting access to the WIPO DAS digital library for depositing copies of Eurasian applications for claiming priority in a situation where they file with other IP Offices party to the WIPO DAS programme.

Amendments made to Rule 211 of the Patent Regulations reduce to one copy all the documents for a Eurasian application if filed with the Eurasian Office in hardcopy.

Starting from 2017, letters patents will carry a QR code for direct reference to the electronic publication of a relevant Eurasian patent on the EAPO web portal allowing free view access to the descriptions on the Eurasian publications server of the EAPO web portal.

The Office reported the publication and grant of 3,282 Eurasian patents in 2017, up 6.53 per cent from the previous year. Overall, 28,801 Eurasian patents were granted from 1996 through 2017.

In 2017, the EAPO Administrative Council addressed prospects for establishing a legal protection system for industrial designs, a new cooperation modality for the EAPC Member States. A relevant Working Group had its kick-off videoconference in November 2017 bringing together professionals from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan.

The EAPO headquarters hosted a regional seminar on patent landscapes in May 2017 delivered by the Eurasian Office to benefit specialists and examiners from national IP Offices of states party to the EAPC. Lending a hand in the seminar were instructors from WIPO, EPO, Rospatent's FIPS, the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (SIPO) and the Skolkovo Intellectual Property Centre.

Signed by EAPO President S. Tlevlessova and EPO President Benoît Battistelli, the Memorandum of Understanding on the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) Pilot Programme was a major landmark in cooperation between the two offices.

The year 2017 saw an added momentum to cooperation with patent offices and professional associations in Asia. Thus, EAPO President S. Tlevlessova and Commissioner Shen Changyu, State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (SIPO), signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) and the Intellectual Property Data Exchange Agreement, September 2017. To translate the accords into reality, the parties exchanged their retrospective collections of patent documents whereby Eurasian Patent Office examiners benefited from tapping into the SIPO Cloud Patent Examination System.

In the course of the Eurasian Office delegation visit to the SIPO, EAPO President S. Tlevlessova awarded EAPO’s Commemorative Medals “Advancing the Future” and personal certificates to China’s Tsinghua University and NUCTECH Company Ltd that had jointly filed the 50,000th Eurasian application.

As a priority in advancing its automated information systems in 2017, the Eurasian Office worked to save labour in generating electronic dossiers for Eurasian applications and patents. As part of the effort to achieve the goal, the Office is now having a dry run of an IT solution for automated saving of documents. Another priority was an advancement achieved in the transition to “paperless office” environment. Today, the users benefit from accessing electronic documents via their EAPO-ONLINE user accounts and rely on improved system-to-system communication between EAPO-ONLINE and automated information systems of major patent attorney firms.

The Eurasian Patent Office has ensured the advancement and resilience to system failure for its information technology infrastructure which keeps pace with latest global technology standards for information security and corporate business continuity. In line with the Eurasian Patent Organization Development Programme for 2017/2021, the team made progress in 2017 with technical protection of its single corporate information infrastructure by implementing an emergency data processing centre for communication security systems and for running system replicas of all core information technology platforms in place.