TNAG-2890-FCO40-4162-Reform-and-localisation-of-the-Hong-Kong-Patent-System-1993 — Page 104

United Kingdom Patent Office (UKPO)

4.32.

In 1990 there were 28,238 applications for the grant of a patent in the UKPO. There are over 250 Senior Patent Examiners.

United States Patent Office (USPO)

4.33.

In 1990 there were 164,558 applications for the grant of a patent. As of 1989 there were 1602 examiners (including design examiners), of which 283 had been recruited in 1989. These examiners were recruited to achieve the planned goal of the USPO to reduce to 18 months the time taken to process patent applications.

Conclusion

4.34.

When considering the number of staff employed in the above offices, it becomes apparent that the quantity and quality of the examiners affects not only the quality of the patents granted, but also the time taken to process patent applications. In particular the fact that the JPO is relatively short-staffed may contribute to the time it takes for that office to grant a patent, which can be as long as seven years. Even if there is only a small number of applications and consequently of examiners in an office, it is still necessary to have examiners in every field of technology. It follows that where there is a limited number of examiners in the office, it is necessary to demand versatility from the examiners.

Resource requirements - a technical information centre

4.35.

A system requiring pre-grant search and examination of patent applications requires the establishment and maintenance of a comprehensive technical information centre. In order to assess novelty it is necessary to go further than assessing whether there is any patented prior art. Prior art includes matters which have gone out of patent or which have never been patented. The role of the technical information centre in the EPO which is typical of patent offices which conduct full search and examination illustrates this well.

4.36.

The role of the EPO technical information centre is to bring together all elements of technical information disclosed anywhere in the world and to organise it. In this way the state of the art in the field of the invention for which the search is being conducted can be found as easily as possible. The organisation of the EPO's technical information centre has been devised to serve their main purpose which is to make a documentary search and to draw up search reports on European applications and on international applications. In 1990 the EPO had over 21 million documents in its technical information centre, a figure which continues to grow at the rate of over one million a year.

4.37.

In order to organise a technical information centre there has to be a classification system which groups together all those documents dealing with each specific technical area.

4.38.

An International Patent Classification System (IPC) provides an internationally approved system of classification. Many countries classify their documents according to the IPC but not all do so.

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