Customised Patent CDs

These patent information products and their related services also enable smaller companies to keep an eye on patent development. They can monitor not only what their competitors are doing, but also the general development of the state of the art. The number of patent applications has more than doubled in the past ten years, and the number of international patent applications is growing at an annual rate of 18%. The use of electronic search and archive media is therefore imperative, if companies are to cope with the increasing number of patent applications in Germany, Europe and the rest of the world. Prior to developing a new product or process, a company must collect all available information on existing developments in the field before deciding whether to proceed with its own idea and later to develop and produce it. Two thirds of all patent applications submitted to the German Patent and Trademark Office are rejected because they do not meet the criterion of novelty. Patent information and glimpses at what other firms are doing enable companies to define their research and development programmes. Furthermore, patent information can be used to find new market niches, identify potential for joint ventures and avoid possible legal conflicts.

In the context of its typesetting work, Bundesdruckerei has been capturing the data of all patent publications for the German Patent Office (recently renamed German Patent and Trademark Office, DPMA) for more than 100 years. This has given the company an international reputation. As the use of electronic media increased in the mid-1990s, Bundesdruckerei decided to make use of the data it had already captured and to market it as patent information. Since then, Bundesdruckerei has been developing a wide range of patent information products on CD-ROM and on the Internet. One of these products is the Deparom-Profil CD-ROM, which provides the customer with a completely individual service.

Deparom-Profil comprises search and retrieval software for researching into various kinds of patent publications, such as granted patents (patent specifications and published unexamined applications), filed patents and descriptions of utility models. The Deparom software is improved every year and enables:

• simple access to documents by means of easy-to-use search options,

• user-friendly ways of displaying the documents,

• integration into a company’s larger internal search systems (e.g. connection to a jukebox allowing searches using several CDs).

Bundesdruckerei advises each user individually on the product and makes a tailor-made offer. Together with the company or a local patent information centre, customers first defines their individual profile by stating their selection criteria: e.g. the publication office, the type of publication, the IPC (International Patent Classification) classes, applicant(s) and inventor(s). All these criteria taken together make up the profile according to which Bundesdruckerei makes a choice from the various patent CDs. The user then receives his or her CD with the original copies of all the patent documents and the searchable bibliographical data according to the hit list. The user is free to choose the delivery cycle of the CD-ROM and can change the profile at any time during the current year for an additional fee.

The CD contains the patent publications of the four patent offices DPMA, EPO, USPTO and WIPO with an index covering all the CDs, bibliographical data and abstracts, as well as the complete text specifications in facsimile format. One year’s data can be accumulated on one or more CD-ROMs. The user is free to choose the CD-ROM’s delivery cycles. Two versions of the CD-ROM are available at different prices.

There are several possible ways in which Deparom-Profil users can access and archive data. One is the traditional stand-alone workstation, although more and more companies are now making the data available to defined user groups via their internal networks. Deparom-Profil actively supports this network mode of working.

Another possible way of accessing and archiving data is via jukeboxes, which offer complete annual series for search purposes.

Users who wish to have permanent access to the information can download all or part of the data (e.g. bibliographical data) onto hard disk systems. Intelligent administrative software then makes it possible to access the complete documents via cross references even if only bibliographical data is stored on hard disks. The Deparom-Profil software thus supports a wide variety of electronic archiving possibilities, so that paper archives will soon be a thing of the past.

Deparom-Profil offers decisive advantages, not only for major corporations but above all for small and medium-sized companies. On the one hand, the new media offer a space-saving alternative to paper and microfilm archives; on the other, Deparom-Profil makes it possible to considerably reduce the number of CD-ROMs that need to be purchased and to cover longer periods of time on a single CD. Since data has been pre-selected, the number of successful searches is corres-pondingly higher. Standardised queries make searching easier, and a fast exchange and transfer of data is possible.

Deparom-Profil’s decisive advantage is the opportunity it provides to cover patent information from a wide range of countries and patent offices. For example, customers can select patent publications published in Germany (by the German Patent and Trademark Office, DPMA), in Europe (European Patent Office, EPO), worldwide (World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO) and in America (United States Patent and Trademark Office, USPTO). The restricted amount of data material and the customised CD-ROM give Deparom-Profil a price advantage over the standard products in the field of patents.

Bundesdruckerei

Fax: ++49/30/25 98 13 06

Further information cpp-281