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Tuesday, December 16, 2003

XML Data Formats for Intellectual Property Business

Yesterday I attended the

ceremonial opening of the

PATRAS on-line filing facilities of the German Patent and Trade Mark Office, and there was some sort of a press conference with more patent professionals attending than press people. One of the more interesting topics of the discussion was on who should benefit from converting patent applications to XML based formats. The benefit for the Patent Office is obvious but many patent attorneys are reluctant or sceptical because of they merely see addtional costs for new software plus training but no benefits in return.

In this context the discussion also touched the question what to do with patent applications coming in via colleagues abroad, e.g. from a U.S. law firm ordering a German Patentanwalt to represent a case locally. Besides of questions related to material work - e.g. translation of texts - there is the question more in general how to process paper-based orders coming from abroad. My guess would be that it would make perfectly sense to utilise XML based data formats also for interchange between patent professionals. For example, if a foreingn colleague wants a German Patentanwalt or a European Patent Attorney to take over a certain case, it should be possible for the foreign colleague not to send a fax or even an e-mail with some attached MS-Word file but instead an XML-based file which would geatly simplify the automated extraction of data for the case management system of the local professional as well as for on-line filing purposes.

My question was: Does anybody know something about _open standards_ for XML-based message interchange amongst patent professionals? In the 90es,

FICPI was partner of the

MIPEX project but as far as I know at that time they have concentrated on "IP Professional <--> Patent Office" types of interaction. If there are no activities at present, where could they be initiated?

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