Last year while I was describing the happenings during the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Regional Workshop on Patent Analytics I mentioned that one of the organizers, Lutz Mailander used the occasion to introduce the participants to a portal being created to help patent information professionals gather information on patent legal status from around the world. WIPO has continued working on the portal, and they are now at the point where they would like to solicit feedback from a larger collection of patent information professionals.
The portal contains information on the patent registers of 84 national, and regional jurisdictions. It is accessible through the ‘Browse’ menu of PATENTSCOPE, or at the following link:
http://www.wipo.int/branddb/portal/portal.jsp.
Various aspects, such as availability of online registers, online file inspection, online gazettes, SPCs, and access to patent publications are recorded in the corresponding table. This table also includes links to the registers, or gazettes accessible online. Users can access these links by clicking on the corresponding “Yes” in the table. Where helpful, hints for navigating the register websites, or for locating respective information have also been added. Of particular use are examples of application, and publication numbers, which lead to positive search hits at the respective regional sites.
A world map illustrates the geographical distribution of each aspect recorded in the table when the corresponding column of the table is selected by clicking on a column heading.
For additional information a comprehensive user guide can be downloaded from the portal website. The user guide also provides some insight into the objectives associated with this project:
The portal meets a recommendation of the “Feasibility study on the establishment of national patent register databases and linkage to PATENTSCOPE” which was prepared in the course of the WIPO Development Agenda project “Intellectual Property and the Public Domain”.
There are plans to further elaborated on the portal. The following enhancements are currently being planned:
In order to keep the portal up-to-date a collaborative approach is under consideration with some of the world’s patent information user groups. In order to enhance the content, pooling of information gathered by patent information specialists for their own, or their organization’s use is being considered.
It is important to mention that the development of the portal was done with the active encouragement, and participation of some of the world’s premier patent information communities, including the Patent Documentation Group (PDG) and the Patent Information Users Group (PIUG).
WIPO invites comments on the look, functionality and content of the portal. Please email your comments and thoughts to Lutz Mailander. Lutz can be contacted at lutz.mailander@wipo.int.
