Last year, the epoline Annual Conference was held in Salzburg, Austria, on 23 and 24 November 2004. I had been invited as a speaker, and now I have converted the slides of my presentation "Quo Vadis? - Does IT really matter for Patent Professionals?" to a PowerPoint file. I have been talking about electronic filing, blogs, and social networking software. Some main topics thereof:
Most probably, electronic filing will never live up to the expectations unless there is a global open XML-based standard for exchange of IP business data not only between applicants (or their representatives), on the one hand, and the Patent Offices. Also needed is an open XML-based standard for exchanging IP business data between law firms (private practices), on the one hand, and their clients, on the other hand, as well as for IP business data exchange amongst law firms (private practices). If electronic filing is effectively restricted to communications with the Offices then law firms (private practices) will see little incentives to invest in such eCommerce technologies. At the time being, only the Patent Offices have real benefits from the introduction of the electronic filing procedures: They can avoid the costly step of proofreading raw OCR results. The law firms (private practices) merely have the costs and problems associated with the introduction of the electronic filing procedures. This might change if also the communication in all directions is taken away from traditional paper-based methods.
Blogs will be an important tool for facilitating communication between the general public and patent professionals. An important example quite drastically demonstrating the necessity of improving the communication between patent professionals and the general public (in particular the media and politicians) is the ongoing debate on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions. It appears to be quite a disaster how much the communication between patent professionals, on the one hand, and the general public, on the other hand, has been hampered by a very effective dissemination of numerous misrepresentations and lies of the various anti-patent lobbying groups by exploiting their superiority in terms of Internet utilisation. In fact the Internet has dramatically changed the rules of public communications. The various anti-patent NGOs are widely enjoying the benefits of their extended Internet skills. They are in fact forming geographically distributed 'on-line communities' with flat hierarchies. This establishes a fast flow of information amongst the acting persons, enabling quick political actions on short-term notice if so needed. In contrast, patent professionals as well as their Institutes and associations are in fact insofar effectively handicapped because of their respective communication structures are different. They do not have in common anything like such on-line community. Their groups tend to be structured more hierarchically, and the dissemination of relevant information amongst all of the patent professionals is accomplished in a slow top-down manner, preferably by traditional paper-based media. However, it would not be surprising if in future the political processes of formation of opinion in the general public will turn more and more to the Internet, thereby causing that such groups organised as on-line communities will eventually set the pace. If this should be true, groups in a more traditional way might be earmarked as losers of the future. Hence, the patent professionals and their associations and Institutes might perhaps wish to adapt soon or risk that their voices will doomed to be heard less than ever. In the US, a handful of patent attorneys have started blogging, and as usual, the Europeans are lagging behind.
Finally, I have done some speculative assessment of social networking software and its future potential and limitations concerning the IP business.
BTW, the organisation of the event by the epoline team was superb, and it was fun to be a speaker.
Feel free to contact PA Axel H Horns via e-mail
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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:
epoline Annual Conference was held in Salzburg, Austria, on 23 and 24 November 2004. I had been invited as a speaker, and now I have converted the slides of my presentation "Quo Vadis? - Does IT really matter for Patent Professionals?" to a 
PowerPoint file. I have been talking about electronic filing, blogs, and social networking software. Some main topics thereof:
