1.1 The Vision of the UK Patent Office is to create an Intellectual Property (IP) system that maximises creativity, innovation and competition. Our Mission is to stimulate innovation and enhance the international competitiveness of British industry and commerce. We offer customers an accessible, high quality, value for money system both national and international, for granting IP rights. We develop staff to meet this mission. The Office's e-business vision is to offer customers effective and attractive electronic service options.
1.2 The objective of e-business in IP is to provide improved service delivery, stimulate efficiencies and cost savings for administrations and users alike, reduce the cost of service provision and the fees and charges which can be a barrier to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in making full use of the IP system.
1.3 The major elements of our strategic plan are:
the electronic delivery of services to customers, including state of the art settlement and payment systems;
improving access to IP information;
increasing availability of search tools;
co-operation with European IP organisations; and
sharing services with other parts of UK Government.
1.4 The costs involved in implementing this strategy will be substantial but the benefits to customers, the furthering of policy objectives for creation, innovation and competition, with particular emphasis on small businesses, and efficiency and effectiveness improvements for the office will all be considerable.
1.5 We want to make the most of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software, systems developed by other IP offices and UK government and minimise of the need for large scale bespoke developments. The rapid applications development approach will be used for systems meeting the suitability criteria for applications development.
1.6 Our aim is to have a coherent and flexible technical infrastructure across all areas of the Office which is easy to maintain and allows us to deploy systems developed by other IP administrations, particularly the European Patent Office (EPO). Investment in information technology is justified on the basis of business need and the benefits to our customers and ourselves.
1.7 The Office has already made good progress in delivering e-business services. [...]"
The paper, however, is relative silent with regard to the question as to whether or not they will stick to open standards not exclusively bound to a single one software platform. There is, however, an indication saying they shall be committed to following government technical standards as this is an essential element in helping to achieve joined-up government, the interoperability of systems and the adoption of common solutions. The e-GIF (government interoperability framework) and common data definitions (XML Schemas) provide the basis of joined-up IT service delivery across government. Well, XML sounds good, but what the heck are "government technical standards"?
Feel free to contact PA Axel H Horns via e-mail
horns@ipjur.com. BEWARE: DO NOT SEND CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION UNENCRYPTED VIA E-MAIL. USE OF ENCRYPTION SOFTWARE IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. PA AXEL H HORNS IS PROVIDING SUPPORT FOR ENCRYPTED E-MAIL MESSAGES USING PGP OR PGP COMPATIBLE FORMATS. THE PGP PUBLIC KEY FOR PA AXEL H HORNS IS AVAILABLE
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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:
The Patent Office E-Business Strategy:
