ICIC 2014 How the European Patent Office Uses Asian Documentation

Asian Documentation

Key facts and Figures

December 2013

Index

1. Asian Filings

2. EPO actively focusing on Asian prior art

3. Comprehensive Asian documentation coverage

4. Classification schemes

5. State of the art search tools

6. Fit-for purpose translation tools

7. Access to the work done by the Asian offices

8. Dedicated training and support

9. Comprehensive prior art search

10. EPO committed to maintaining top quality

In 2013:

More than 1.4 million

patent applications

were filed in China,

Japan and Korea

Asian filings

While the number of domestic patent applications in China has surged in the

last decade, the number of these having a family member in an official EPO

language has fallen from 60% in 2001 to less than 30% in 2011

Asian filings (2/2)

Source: PDQM

Sharp decrease of

Chinese publications

with a family member

in EN, DE or FR

EPO actively focusing on Asian prior art

• Considering the rapid increase in Asian prior art, the EPO has been working on numerous developments:

– Data acquisition

– Classification

– Search and documentation tools

– Translation options

– Access to the work done by the Asian Offices

– Examiner training

Comprehensive Asian documentation coverage (1/4)

• Almost 100% coverage of

bibliographic and image patent

data for the major Asian

countries

• Coverage similarly

comprehensive for English-

language abstracts (China:

patents and utility models;

Japan and Korea: patents only)

Origin Number of

documents Time coverage

China 8.6 million complete from

1985

Japan 22.5 million

from 1931

(complete from

ca. 1970)

Korea 4.4 million complete from ca.

1978

Comprehensive Asian documentation coverage (2/4)

• In English full text (description and claims) bulk translated

– Chinese patent publications and utility models

• 6.0 million documents from 1985-2012

– Japanese patent publications

• 7.3 million documents from 1998 onwards

– Korean patent publications

• 1.3 million documents from 2008 onwards

Comprehensive Asian documentation coverage (3/4)

• Integrated access to the world's largest citation database

• Japan

– 4.1 million citing JP publications

– 13.5 million cited patents

• Korea

– 0.5 million citing KR publications

– 1.4 million cited patents

• China

– 0.9 million citing CN publications

Comprehensive Asian documentation coverage (4/4)

• Access to Asian Non Patent Literature (NPL) is being enhanced

– Agreement between EPO and East View enables examiners to

download Chinese NPL from CNKI

– CNKI includes more than 25 million articles

• Asian NPL is now a priority of the EPO which is currently assessing

the various Asian NPL portals.

Breakdown of documentation coverage per technical area

• Few areas are now immune from the influx of Asian documentation

• Can be accessed field by field

• Shows the make up of documentation in each technical field

• Shows the historical evolution over time

• Limiting to CPC (EC) can cut out many documents

EC/CPC Classification or only IC

Classified in IC - Country of origin

Historical Evolution of the Documents in the Field

Classification schemes

• Classification schemes used by EPO examiners:

– Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC)

– International Patent Classification (IPC)

– FI / F-term system from Japan

>> SIPO and KIPO have agreed to classify in CPC, facilitating

the access to Korean and Chinese documentation

State of the art search tools (1/2)

Integrated

Full text search

• Classes

• Free query

• Keywords

• Selection of

databases

State of the art search tools (2/2)

• Viewing documents retrieved by family

• Direct access to various translation possibilities

• Direct access to the file wrapper of the Asian Offices

Fit-for-purpose translation tools (1/2)

• Machine translation

• Human assisted machine translation

• Machine translation manually corrected for CN, JP, KR, RU

and TW documents

• Available in 2/3 days

• Translations done by the Asian Patent Expert Group

• For short passages only

• Examiner experts in Chinese, Japanese and Korean

• Full human translation (Legal translation)

Fit-for-purpose translation tools (2/2)

Examiners select the

translation which best

fits intended purpose

Access to the work done by the Asian offices (1/3)

• Art. 124, Rule 141 EPC: Prior art information

– Applicants are requested to provide the results of any search on

corresponding national or regional applications

• Citations extracted from patent publications

• Citations provided on a monthly basis by various offices (JP and KR)

– Preparations developed to automatically retrieve cited documents

by other patent offices

Access to the work done by the Asian offices (2/3)

• Direct Access to File wrappers of JPO, KIPO and SIPO via DI+

• Machine translated communications

Access to the work done by the Asian offices (3/3)

Common citation Document

Dedicated training and support (1/3)

• Asian Patent Expert Group (APEG)

– Network of representatives in each technical field

• Disseminates information on Asian matters

• Trains examiners

– Language expert groups

• Assist examiners with Chinese, Japanese and Korean

documents

Dedicated training and support (2/3)

• Asia Event with presentations on:

– Asian translations, various options for various needs

– Accessing the work done by JPO, KIPO, and SIPO

– Asian patent information: EPO database content

– Asian Non-Patent Literature

• Mandatory training for all examiners on Asian documentation

– Latest trend in Asian filings

• General view

• Technical field-specific view (preparation doctrends)

– Latest tool development

Dedicated training and support (3/3)

Practical Guidelines on Asian documentation

distributed to all examiners

• Deferred examination:

– JPO: 3 years

– KIPO: 5 years

– SIPO: 3 years

JPO KIPO SIPO

Clarity Art. 36(6) Art. 42(4) Art. 26

Novelty Art. 29(1) Art. 29(1) Art. 22(1)

Inventive Step Art. 29(2) Art. 29(2) Art. 22(2)

Comprehensive prior art search (1/3)

Asia Event

2 hour training

Guidelines on

Asian documentation

The consultation of Asian documents by EPO examiners is increasing rapidly

Comprehensive prior art search (2/3)

21% of the patents cited in EPO search reports in 2013 had an Asian priority

Comprehensive prior art search (3/3)

2013 compared to 2012

- almost 30% increase in patent citations with a Chinese priority

- almost 20% increase in patent citations with a Korean priority

Committed to maintaining quality

• Documentation, tools, translation options, training and knowledge of

Asian documentation is revolutionising the work of examiners

• The EPO will continue to improve its documentation coverage as it

grows and continue to develop tools for efficiently searching, retrieving

and assessing the Asian documentation

• The EPO comprehensively addresses the challenges posed by the

rapid explosion in Asian documentation