Monitoring of EPO Search Reports for Italian Patent Applications
During the most recent AIDB Annual Members’ Meeting, the results were presented of the monitoring of the EPO research report on Italian patent applications, conducted by a special working group formed within the association and coordinated by member Claudia Finetti.
About a year after the initiation of the prior art search and preliminary opinion procedure, it was decided to establish this working group to monitor the progress of this service provided by the UIBM/EPO, for example with regard to:
- timeline for receiving search reports and preliminary opinions;
- any problems in obtaining said search report or opinion from the UIBM;
- any issues in retrieving the cited patent and NPL prior art;
- the actual presence of the Italian examiner, in order to ensure that the search conducted solely on the English-language claims—with the rest of the patent application automatically translated using language software—was not overly “stringent.” For this reason, it was decided to verify the number of documents referred to as “X”;
- any issues related to CI.
After the monitoring tool and questionnaire were finalized, the surveillance began on February 1, 2010—with group participants retroactively entering the research reports they had already received by that date—and continued through May 17, 2010. As of May 17, 2010, responses to the questionnaire had been submitted by 8 consulting firms and 4 companies, covering a total of 468 Italian patent applications.
Click here to download the report presented by Claudia Finetti at the AIDB Annual Members’ Meeting, held on May 26, 2010, in Genoa.
For more information, please contact the AIDB Secretariat.