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

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Thursday, September 11, 2003

Germany is now ready for takeoff concerning e-Government procedures in IP practice.

The Directive on electronic exchange in legal relations of the practice of Intellectual Property business [

"Verordnung über den elektronischen Rechtsverkehr im gewerblichen Rechtsschutz (ERvGewRV)] had already been published in the German Law Gazette [

"Bundesanzeiger"] on August 08, 2003.

Now, also the Directive on legal proceedings before the German Patent and Trade Mark Office in patent matters [

Verordnung zum Verfahren in Patentsachen vor dem Deutschen Patent- und Markenamt (Patentverordnung PatV)] has come out creating further legal prerequisites for starting with e-filing with the German Patent and Trade Mark Office. Supplementary, there is also the Fifth Directive amending the Directive on Trade Marks [

Fünfte Verordnung zur Änderung der Markenverordnung].

These texts, in particular the Directive on electronic exchange in legal relations of thepracticee of Intellectual Property business, have a bright side and a dark side.

On the bright side they enable the utilisation of generic XML based data formats. On the other side, they have a tendency to foster a monoculture of operating system platforms throughout the circles of prospective users of those e-filing techniques.

The German Patent and Trade Mark Office is strictly committed to XML formats whereas the German Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht) also allows murkier data formats like MS-Word 97 or 2000. HTML is said to be allowed for filing with the Patent Court "if it can be displayed with Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 5.x". Is that an example for proper regulation for e-Government technology?

But there are things still more worse than that. The most dispiriting aspect of the current situation is that each and every submission has de facto to be digitally signed using a very particular software GERVA in version 1.12 or higher to be purchased exclusively from

DATEV e.G.

Of course, this

GERVA software only runs on MS-Windows platforms. Forget about your Apple-OS or Linux machines.

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