MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS: FACTS AND FIGURES

In 2019, inventors filed 3,482 applications with the Eurasian Office, which is almost equivalent to the amount of applications filed in the previous year.

Overall, the Eurasian Patent Office had 57,354 Eurasian application filings since the establishment of the Eurasian Patent Organization in 1996, through 2019.

Applicants from the EAPC Contracting States filed 724 applications, exceeding the result of 2018 by 9 per cent. The overall amount of the Eurasian applications coming from the EAPC Contracting States increased by 31 per cent within the last 5 years.

In 2018, the Eurasian Patent Office streamlined its process management to reduce the processing period for applications.

Compared to 2018, the average pendency between the acceptance date of the application for substantive examination and the date of the first notice of the examination was reduced by 28 days on average and now amounts to 330 days. Between 2016 and 2019 this period has been reduced by 122 days.

In 2019, the number of Eurasian applications awaiting the actual start of substantive examination decreased by 5 per cent.
Currently, a number of PPH Pilot Programmes are in place between EAPO and Japan Patent Office (JPO), European Patent Office (EPO), China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) In 2019, the number of applications under the PPH programs amounted to 43, which exceeds the respective number for the last year by 87 per cent.

EAPO signed Memoranda of Understanding on bilateral cooperation with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and the African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI), as well as signed a Collaboration Agreement on access to patent information concerning the legal status of the Eurasian patent applications and granted Eurasian patents with the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP).

On January 1, 2019, EAPO launched the procedure for classification of patent documents according to the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) and the use of the CPC in EAPO as an internal classification system along with the International Patent Classification (IPC).

The Eurasian Office reported the grant of 2,697 Eurasian patents in 2019, which is up 2.55 per cent over 2018. Overall, 34,128 Eurasian patents were granted during the period 1996 through 2019.

Applicants from EAPC Contracting States and the Republic of Moldova were granted 477 Eurasian patents in 2019, marking 17.69 per cent of the total number of patent grants throughout the year.

In 2019, applicants from the States not party to the EAPC had 2,220 Eurasian patent grants. The percentage of patents granted to applicants from those states amounted to 82.31 per cent of all the patent grants of 2019.

The Office completed the transition to instant publication of information on the Eurasian applications and patent search reports, as well as on the granted Eurasian patents. Users of the Eurasian system also benefit from instant publication of full description to the patents and notifications on the changes in legal status of the Eurasian applications and patents. Introduction of tools and technology for instant publication, as well as the transition to the preliminary preparation of description for publication made it possible to decrease almost by half the time between obtaining the applicant's consent with the EAPO decision and the granting and publication of a Eurasian patent.

EAPO also changed, in the reporting year, its practice to allow reception of application materials in character-coded (DOCX) format as a priority filing option.

Registration of the 500th patent attorney in the Register of Eurasian Patent Attorneys became a remarkable event for EAPO in 2019.

The reporting year also saw the first Eurasian Inventor Award and the Eurasian Patent Universiade “Advancing the Future”. This competition is aimed at promotion of inventive activities in the Eurasian region and raising awareness in intellectual property.