"The Trilateral Offices considered the letter from the Trilateral Alliance of Intellectual Property Information and Services Companies addressed to the heads of the Trilateral Offices , and confirmed the following for the acceleration of patent information dissemination:
- The Trilateral Offices acknowledge that they each have a process in place that encourages continuing dialog and communications with private sector organizations involved with the dissemination of patent information.
- The Trilateral Offices share the opinion that the key dissemination tool for patent information in the future will be the Internet.
- Each office will continue to use the Internet in such ways as are determined to be appropriate in their individual policies regarding legal, technological, and data requirements.
- The Trilateral Offices appreciate the contribution of the private sector in their information dissemination efforts and look forward to having continued discussions on this topic.
At the 22nd Annual Trilateral Conference the Trilateral Offices concluded the following as stated in the "22nd Memorandum of Understanding on Trilateral Cooperation in the Field of Industrial Property".
"The Trilateral Offices reinforce its commitment to use the Internet as the key dissemination tool for patent information in the future. Each office will use the internet in ways that are appropriate in light of individual legal, technological, and data requirements. One of the projects in this respect is the Japanese interface for esp@cenet which is being developed by the EPO in cooperation with the JPO and will be launched in 2005. Further projects can be a Japanese interface to epoline and the implementation of linguistic tools in these applications.
The Trilateral Offices appreciate the contribution of the private sector in their information dissemination efforts and will each encourage a continuing dialog with these organizations."
Well, ... I must confess that I do not understand the gist of this text. Even Google is silent on that "22nd Memorandum of Understanding on Trilateral Cooperation in the Field of Industrial Property". Where is that ominous "letter from the Trilateral Alliance of Intellectual Property information and Services Companies addressed to the heads of the Trilateral Offices" available on the Internet? Is all that merely gobbledygook? Could anybody please give me a hint on how to read such statements?
Perhaps the European Patent Office should at first start with improving the dissemination of patent-related information on the Internet by abandoning the boring page-by-page download mode currently implemented in espacenet. The publication of patent documents is already paid by the applicant's fees, so why should the Patent Offices be so much considerate of commercial document suppliers' interests?
[UPDATE] One of my readers has indicated that indeed espacenet will move towards the download of full documents next year - I obviously had missed this announcement. Thanks.
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Dipl.-Phys. Axel H Horns is Patentanwalt (German Patent Attorney),
European Patent Attorney as well as European Trade Mark Attorney. In particular, he is Member of:
European Patent Office (EPO) just has published a 
