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Patent Attorney Axel H Horns' Blog on Intellectual Property Law.

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Wednesday, August 27, 2003

E-Government in Intellectual Property Practise

The burst of the dot com bubble did not mean that e-commerce was over. Neither e-government has been rendered obsolete. When looking at the Intellectual Property business this insight is reconfirmed by the mounting efforts of the various patent and trade mark authorities to establish facilities for electronic filing. Today, the WIPO has

announced the first ever electronic patent application submission without paper copy filing. And, the EPO proudly

announces the epoline Online Filing version 2.00. Moreover, the Swiss Patent and Trade Mark Office

welcomes more than 50 percent of the trade mark applications in electronic form.

This efforts of the authorities surely are driven by the need to save money which in the past was spent for OCR scanning and proof-reading.

At the time being it looks as if for applicants and their representatives the participation in e-government is more or less voluntary. However, the WIPO already offers a free reduction for e-filing, and others surely will follow. For example, the German Patent and Trade Mark Office will offer a EUR 10,00 discount on e-filing provided they have started their e-filing facilities which is expected to occur later this year or in 2004. So, sooner or later anyone insisting on paper filing will effectively be punished by higher fees. And, in the event that many patent and trade mark professionals should collectively refuse e-filing technologies, the respective governments surely will be creative in finding ways how to persuade them. Don't forget: e-filing will neither be introduced to please the geeks nor to enhance the prestige of some bureaucratic institutions but for saving real money which in the past was wasted for OCR proof-reading.

But will the patent and trade mark professionals also benefit from this new technology? Big question. In the first place, introducing e-filing costs extra money and requires re-engineering of many internal business processes.

A chance for obtaining profits from e-filing would probably emerge only if a sufficient number of patent an trade mark professionals would really embrace e-commerce technologies. This means that also the data exchange between client and attorney as well as between co-operating attorneys is switched over to XML data exchange technologies based on open standards.

Up to now there seems to be little drive visible with regard to such developments.

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