Strategic EAPO Documents on Digitalization

Three key documents were adopted in 2023 that define the development strategy of the EAPO and Eurasian Patent Office activities in digitalization.

Almost all sections of the EAPO Development Program for 2023–2028 address information technology issues, but the greatest attention is paid to IT aspects in two sections of the Program: Section 2, “Building a Common Information and Examination Space,” and Section 3, “Digitalization of Eurasian Patent Office.”

The program provides for three groups of activities on the digital agenda:

the first group includes activities for the integration of the information systems and digital services of the Eurasian Patent Office and the national patent offices in the region, including the implementation of common data formats and up-to-date information exchange standards, common information services, as well as the convergence of the practices of both the Eurasian Patent Office and the national offices in digitalization.

the second group of activities concerns the digitalization of the Eurasian Office itself. The Eurasian Patent Office’s information systems have not been significantly updated in more than ten years, so the program aims to transfer these systems to the most up-to-date technological platforms, significantly improve the effectiveness of their application at all stages of the Eurasian procedure, and expand integration with the information systems of the Eurasian Patent Office’s partners in the region and globally; Integration with the WIPO’s information systems is the most relevant at the global level.

the third group of measures deals with information security and the continuity of operations. It provides for both the development of Eurasian Patent Office IT infrastructure and assistance on these issues to the national IP offices of the EAPO Member States.

The EAPO Digitalization Concept until 2030 was prepared and adopted in the first half of 2023. It lays down the fundamentals of the target model for the digitalization of the organization. The concept defines the main areas of technological and administrative changes in the organization and the conceptual goals of digitalization. A considerable part of the document addresses the forecasting of the development of promising information technologies in the medium and long term to ensure a broad digital transformation throughout the region.

A Comprehensive plan for interaction on information technology issues with the national IP offices of the EAPO Member States for 2023–2028 was approved in April 2023. The plan specifies the main areas of activity for the organization in terms of cooperation with its Member States on the digital agenda: maintaining and developing existing projects and operations, exploring opportunities for implementing new initiatives, and launching new regional IT cooperation projects on this basis. Among more than 40 projects and activities in the plan most of them deal with the creation and development of a common examination and information space in the region.

Thus, in 2023, the Eurasian Patent Office’s digitalization activities were based on the provisions of these three documents. The documents were presented to IT experts from the national IP offices at the twelfth meeting of the Permanent Working Group on Information Technologies of the EAPO Administrative Council (PWGI), which took place on June 9, 2023.

Creation of Integrated Information System of the EAPO

Updating all of the organization’s key information systems is one of the most important strategic objectives for the digitalization of the EAPO. A project was launched to create the Integrated Information System (IIS) of the EAPO to solve this issue.

The first stage of the project was completed in the reporting year. It included the creation of the new official EAPO website, the upgrading of the Automated General Workflow Management System (AGWMS), and the development of a detailed plan for the second stage of activities. All of these project objectives were successfully completed.

The new official EAPO website was launched in September 2023. The new site has a modern design and is based on a contemporary content management system which allows the posting of information with minimal labor input and offers user-friendly site navigation features.

The site provides for quick access to the Eurasian Patent Office’s digital services from the home page, primarily to the service for filing Eurasian applications for inventions and industrial designs and to the patent documentation collections available.

The new website has improved the structure of the news on the activities of the Eurasian Patent Office and the national IP offices, on publications about the Eurasian patent system on third-party media resources. This has allowed users to better navigate the current Eurasian intellectual property agenda and to more quickly find presentation documents and media materials from the office.

The visualization of the calendar on the site has also been improved, and it provides convenient access to announcements about current events in the Eurasian space directly from the home page.

The home page also provides access to information for the clarification of any issues related to the filing of applications, the payment of fees, actions for obtaining or licensing patents, as well as regulatory documents or the basics of the functioning of the EAPO.

The second stage of the creation of the IIS includes information services for the national IP offices of the EAPO Member States, users of the Eurasian patent system, and other interested parties and will be implemented on the EAPO new website in 2024.

Another important outcome of the first stage of the IIS project was the implementation of the EAPO AGWMS on a new, up-to-date platform. The Directum RX product was selected as the basis for the AGWMS, because the platform provides the necessary speed and stability and at the same time allows for the broad customization of the system to the needs of the organization.

The activities completed included the deployment of the new platform, which has been configured to the needs and workflows of the Eurasian Patent Office and the migration of general workflow documents from the previous system.

In addition, a mobile application was created for the Android and iOS platforms with basic document processing functionality to enable the Eurasian Patent Office staff to perform general workflow operations without the need to be bound to a fixed workplace, including when employees are on business trips.

The possibility of integration with the national IP offices of the EAPO Member States is another important feature built into the new version of the AGWMS. The Procedure for Electronic Document Exchange within the General Workflow Management between the Eurasian Patent Office and the National IP Offices of the Eurasian Patent Convention Contracting States approved by the EAPO Administrative Council entered into force on June 1, 2023. For the implementation of the provisions of the above document, a dedicated workplace has been created in a protected environment of the AGWMS for use by the national IP offices.

In the pilot phase of the project, access to the AGWMS using the web interface was arranged in the reporting year for the national IP offices of the Republic of Tajikistan and the Republic of Belarus, and activities were begun to connect the office of the Russian Federation. In addition to using a web interface, integration functionality using web services has been implemented in the AGWMS. In the future, it will allow the national offices to interact with the AGWMS directly from their internal information systems.

Development of Eurasian Patent Office Information Systems

The reliability of most of the office’s information resources and processes was improved in 2023 due to the implementation of a new system for monitoring Eurasian Patent Office IT services, and the reaction time in the event of technical failures in Eurasian Patent Office services has been significantly reduced. The new system monitors the operability of systems and services, the correctness of the results of scheduled automatic processes, and degree of utilization of hardware on more than 25 servers in 24/7 mode. When failures are detected or when the parameters monitored go outside a preset range, the monitoring system generates alerts and sends them to the responsible staff by e-mail and to the appropriate Telegram channel.

To improve examiners’ efficiency in the patent search stage, a new Examiner Workplace service was implemented in the Eurasian Patent Office in the reporting year. The service allows examiners to generate patent search reports automatically using information from the Eurasian Patent Information System (EAPATIS), international search reports, and information on searches carried out using artificial intelligence tools. The service also offers opportunities for the preparation and coordination of search strategies and search reports for quality control purposes.

A new functionality has been implemented in the EAPO-ONLINE electronic exchange system which is related to the electronic submission and receipt of correspondence for several procedures. In particular, users of the system are now able to submit requests to change the representatives in applications and patents, requests to extend patent term validity, oppositions against the grant of Eurasian patents, etc., as well as send observations regarding the patentability of inventions.

Another new functionality has been added to the EAPO-ONLINE system for the automatic transliteration of the names or titles of applicants and the names of inventors (authors) from Russian into English at the stage of filing applications for inventions and industrial designs.

A new version of the EAPO mobile application was released in the reporting year due to the approval of a unified visual style for the design of electronic and printed Eurasian Patent Office materials. In addition to changes in the visual representation of the home pages, the links to all of the organization’s information resources have been updated in the new version of the application, including the regulatory legal acts section.

In the digitalization of the procedure for patenting industrial designs in the Eurasian Patent Office, a set of activities was carried out in the reporting year to transfer all processes of preparing for the publication of information on industrial designs (applications, patents, and notifications) to the HIVE system. Previously, the HIVE system was used only to prepare for the publication information on inventions. The use of this system for two types of industrial property subject matters will make it possible to unify multiple information processing operations and to apply to industrial designs the Eurasian Patent Office techniques and best practices used for publications in the field of inventions.

Creation of Common Eurasian Information Space and Scientific Activities

Four meetings of the Permanent Working Group on Information Technologies of the EAPO Administrative Council (PWGI) took place in the reporting year, on February 27, June 9, September 27, and November 30, 2023.

The main issues discussed at the PWGI meetings throughout 2023 were:

- the prioritization of the activity areas for the joint implementation of IT projects. Following the results of review, a corresponding list was presented for discussion at a meeting of the EAPO Administrative Council and approved.

- the coordination of the project for the implementation of digital three-dimensional models in the national IP offices.

- issues of the exchange of information and documents related to both industrial property and general workflow management.

- issues of cooperation with regard to information security and the development of information infrastructure.

Working contacts between the IT experts of the Eurasian Patent Office and the national IP offices of the EAPO Member States were significantly expanded in 2023. During the year, Eurasian Patent Office experts visited the national IP offices of the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Azerbaijan, the Republic of Belarus, the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and the Republic of Tajikistan. Task meetings between Eurasian Patent Office and Rospatent experts also continued on a regular basis. During these visits and meetings, the state of digitalization in the national IP offices was studied, the results of activities implemented by the Eurasian Patent Office in this area were presented, prospects for cooperation on specific projects were discussed, and, where necessary, activities were carried out as part of cooperation projects.

In addition to the face-to-face meetings held throughout the year, IT experts also communicated using videoconferencing tools and within user groups created on several communication platforms with each national office.

The project for the integration of information from the public registers of the national offices and the Eurasian Patent Office is an important new area of cooperation in digitalization with the national IP offices of the EAPO Member States.

These integration services will allow the creation of a common Eurasian register for information on both regional and national industrial property subject matters. Consequently, applicants will have the ability to obtain information on IP rights throughout the region via a single access point.

This project was launched in the reporting year at the Intellectual Property Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

The joint use by the patent offices of the region of software products and systems developed by one of the offices is a promising area of regional IT cooperation.

This approach was successfully implemented in 2023 in the bilateral cooperation of the Eurasian Patent Office and the Federal Institute of Industrial Property (FIPS). In the first quarter of the reporting year, experts of the two offices integrated the EAPATIS system with the new Rospatent search platform.

The implementation of technologies for working with the three-dimensional digital models (3D models) submitted in the files of applications for inventions, industrial designs, and trademarks is another example of the successful scaling of the best practices of national offices.

The implementation of support for 3D models in its own systems has enabled the Eurasian Patent Office to assist the interested national IP offices of the EAPO Member States in the introduction of such technologies since the end of 2022. Thus, following the implementation of a pilot project at the Intellectual Property Agency of the Republic of Azerbaijan involving Eurasian Patent Office experts, the first application for trademark registration which included a 3D model of the subject matter claimed was filed with the office at the end of February 2023.

In May of the reporting year, the Intellectual Property Office of the Republic of Armenia announced the successful implementation of the project and the beginning of acceptance of 3D models of inventions and industrial designs.

The first applications containing files with 3D models were received by the National Center for Patents and Information, Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the Republic of Tajikistan, in July 2023.

In the summer of the reporting year, support for technologies for working with 3D models was introduced in the State Agency of Intellectual Property and Innovation under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Kyrgyz Republic (Kyrgyzpatent).

At the end of the reporting year, Eurasian Patent Office experts additionally rendered advisory support to IT experts of the National Intellectual Property Center of the Republic of Belarus, who independently implemented a project to master 3D technologies.

Because bilateral agreements on cooperation in the field of search and the examination of applications for inventions were signed in 2023 and began to be implemented between the Eurasian Patent Office and the national IP offices of the Republic of Armenia and the Kyrgyz Republic, a functionality was added to the EAPO-ONLINE system in the reporting year for the submission of national applications from these countries to the Eurasian Patent Office for search and for the forwarding of the results of the work of the Eurasian Patent Office examiners to the national offices. Over the several months of use of the new functionality, the Eurasian Patent Office received 19 applications for search and examination from the national IP offices.

More information on the IT projects related to the creation of a common Eurasian information and examination space is provided in Section 6, “Building a Common Eurasian Information and Examination Space.”

From January to November 2023, Eurasian Patent Office IT experts participated in research activities on the Organizational and Legal Aspects of Building a Common Examination and Information Space in the Field of Industrial Property in the Eurasian Region.

In the 2nd stage of the research work (the review of the current state of and prospects for interaction between examiners of the national IP offices and the Eurasian Patent Office), Eurasian Patent Office IT experts investigated and presented in their final report the following issues:

- a description of the information systems and services used in the Eurasian patent procedure, including their integration capabilities and use by the national IP offices of the EAPO Member States.

- information exchange between the Eurasian Patent Office and the national offices.

- analysis of the state of affairs in the national IP offices of the EAPO Member States in terms of data exchange on intellectual property subject matter and in terms of the creation, development, and use of information systems and technologies in the offices (based on a survey of the national offices carried out by the Eurasian Patent Office).

- analysis of the basic infrastructure platform of the EAPO and the Eurasian Patent Office.

- analysis of support for the information security of Eurasian Patent Office assets.

In the 2nd stage of the research work (the identification of priority steps for the development of cooperation between the national IP offices and the Eurasian Patent Office and the preparation of proposals necessary for the creation of a Common examination and information space in the field of industrial property), Eurasian Patent Office IT experts prepared proposals on the following:

- IT support for the proposed projects for examiner interaction in the region.

- the integration of the information systems and digital services of the Patent Offices in the Eurasian region.

- programs for information exchange and the digitalization of the Eurasian Patent Office and the national IP offices according to uniform standards.

- the creation of a unified electronic environment for interaction between examiners and a system of shared access to global patent funds.

- the elaboration of a common concept for information security.

Cooperation with WIPO on Digitalization

Throughout the reporting year, the Eurasian Patent Office carried out work on the integration of its internal systems with the WIPO CASE portal, a global resource for patent office examiners administered by WIPO.

WIPO CASE is a platform to provide patent offices with centralized access to the results of search and examination in the area of inventions. Currently, patent examiners from 40 industrial property offices worldwide have access to the platform’s information resources. Access for patent examiners to the work products of their colleagues in other offices on applications for similar or identical inventions allows offices to avoid the duplication of work, improve the quality of their own work, and reduce the time required for patent search and substantive examination.

The Eurasian Patent Office has joined WIPO CASE in 2016; however, it has not yet sent its own documents for publication on the portal. The purpose of the activities completed in 2023 was to begin sending the results of Eurasian Patent Office search and examination to WIPO in automatic mode for posting on this resource. The scope of these activities included the selection of the necessary type of documents from the dossier of Eurasian applications, the formation of data batches in accordance with WIPO requirements, and the transfer of the arrays generated to WIPO for automatic upload to the organization’s database.

In December 2023, WIPO experts analyzed the data samples transferred from the Eurasian Patent Office, and the Eurasian Patent Office’s systems were prepared for the transmission of information to WIPO in the production mode. President of the Eurasian Patent Office Grigory Ivliev forwarded the notification necessary for the Eurasian Patent Office to obtain new status in WIPO CASE to Daren Tang, Director General of WIPO, at the end of 2023.

In the reporting year, the Eurasian Patent Office continued to use the WIPO Translate machine translation system based on artificial intelligence neural network technologies. The WIPO Translate system is used by the Eurasian Office to translate huge volumes of patent documentation into English or Russian when placed in the databases of the EAPATIS system, as well as for the direct online translation of various components of patent documentation in working with patent documents found by users.

A meeting of Eurasian Patent Office IT experts and developers of the WIPO Translate system was held in December 2023, at which the Eurasian Office representatives forwarded to their WIPO colleagues a corpus of parallel texts prepared by the Eurasian Patent Office, which can be used to teach new versions of the language models (in Russian and English). The meeting attendees also discussed the prospects for cooperation between the Eurasian Patent Office and WIPO in the creation and use of artificial intelligence tools.

Meeting with representatives of WIPO's Global Databases Division

In September 2023, information on the Eurasian Patent Information System (EAPATIS) was posted to the WIPO INSPIRE platform. The information included a description of databases, search capabilities, and features for the processing of search results. This information, posted on a publicly available resource, will be useful to a wide range of users of the patent systems, such as inventors, innovators, and representatives of the business community around the world.

In July 2023, the Eurasian Patent Office completed the first stage of preparation for the reform of the PCT Minimum Documentation through upgrading the Authority File based on the WIPO’s new approaches.

In 2023, the Assembly of the PCT Union decided to expand the composition of the patent documentation to be consulted by International Searching Authorities (ISA) and International Preliminary Examining Authorities (IPEA) under the PCT. The assembly also adopted new requirements for the provision by International Authorities of their own patent funds at the global level. These modifications will come into force on January 1, 2026, but preparation for them began in the Eurasian Patent Office this year: the modernization of the Authority File is the first stage of measures for the transition to the new work standards.

Since August 1, 2023, the Eurasian Patent Office has been distributing the expanded version of the Authority File on its website. It is generated in accordance with the 2021 revision of WIPO standard ST.37, “Recommendation for an Authority File of Published Patent Documents”. It is important to note that the Eurasian Patent Office is the first office in the world that updates the information on the Authority File on a daily basis, thanks to the technology implemented for the continuous publication of Eurasian patent documents.

The Authority File allows any user to verify the composition of the documents in its database with the full list of patent documents published by the Eurasian Patent Office since 1996. The list provides detailed information on the accessibility of the main components of patent documents to full-text search tools, namely, abstract, description of the invention, and claims.

A Eurasian Patent Office delegation took part in the eleventh session of the Committee on WIPO Standards in Geneva in December 2023.

The Eurasian Patent Office delegates, speaking under the corresponding agenda items, told the meeting attendees about the strategic documents adopted governing the development of IT sector at the EAPO, the Office’s plans for the development of information systems and services, and regional cooperation in information technology.

Speaking at the meeting, the Eurasian Patent Office delegation gave presentations showing the office’s experience in the development and implementation of the Authority File (WIPO Standard ST.37) and technologies for working with digital three-dimensional models (WIPO standard ST.91). In addition, the Eurasian Patent Office delegation spoke about the office’s plans for the implementation of the WIPO standards related to the legal status in the areas of inventions and industrial designs and the exchange of information on industrial property.

Modernization of the Eurasian Patent Office’s Information Technology Management System

In the reporting year, the Eurasian Patent Office’s Department of Information Technologies (DIT) responsible for the design and development of information systems, services and web resources, aligned its system for the management and organization of work with the best international practices.

The office has implemented a corporate workflow management system, which is also used for project management, error tracking, task completion control, and the recording of completed work. The system is used for the performance and monitoring of the work of all DIT employees and to process user requests received from all structural subdivisions of the Eurasian Patent Office, as well as to interact with the contractors who develop and render technical support for the certain information systems of the Eurasian Patent Office.

The office also introduced a corporate knowledge base in the reporting year, in which the office’s IT experts maintain documentation on projects and systems, workflow management, etc.

The flexible approaches to project management in place in the subdivisions that make up the DIT ensure that short meetings are held daily to synchronize staff actions, to analyze the results achieved, and to plan activities, usually using videoconferencing tools. Meetings of the heads of the structural subdivisions of the DIT are held weekly.

In 2023, a technical support service for users was created, and its operating procedures were developed by the DIT. All requests filed with the technical support service pass through a single electronic window and are registered, ranked by category, and further distributed to performers, including to third-party contractors where necessary. Users filing requests with the technical support service have the ability to track the progress of their requests and send comments on their issues.

In the reporting year, the Eurasian Patent Office DIT also introduced a system for evaluating the performance of all employees using key performance indicators (KPIs). The evaluation is carried out monthly based on seven elaborated criteria.

Information Security Management and Maintenance of Basic Infrastructure

A new subdivision of the Eurasian Patent Office was created in 2023. Its key functions include ensuring the information security of the office in accordance with international information security standard ISO 27001 and continuity of operation standard ISO 22301.

In addition to supporting internal processes, special attention was paid to joint projects with the national IP offices for the creation of a secure and continuous infrastructure platform for the unified IT services developed as part of the creation of a common examination space.

The year 2023 was full of practical activities for the implementation of joint projects to bring the basic infrastructure of the national IP offices to a high level of protection against unforeseen circumstances and readiness to repel potential cyber-attacks.

During visits to the national IP offices of the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Belarus, the Kyrgyz Republic, and the Republic of Tajikistan, the experts were introduced to the key information systems, technologies, and information security infrastructure used in the national IP offices and held consultations on promising areas of cooperation. In terms of basic infrastructure and information security, an audit of network and server infrastructures, information security systems, hardware, and the configuration of examiners’ workplaces was carried out jointly with IT experts of the national IP offices.

An agreement was reached on direct communication between IT experts to resolve common issues, provide advice and assistance by Eurasian Patent Office experts on the implementation and configuration of basic software and switching equipment, and to provide emergency assistance in force majeure situations affecting the basic information infrastructure systems of the national IP offices. Communication is conducted via a common forum for experts of the national IP offices and the Eurasian Patent Office.

At a meeting of the PWGI, cooperation between the Eurasian Patent Office and national IP offices of the EAPO Member States in information security was reported on, including the first results of joint activity and Eurasian Patent Office proposals for consultations and common projects.

The following joint activities were carried out together with experts of the national IP office of Kyrgyzstan to implement and configure basic information security management systems:

• analysis and recommendations were prepared on Kyrgyzpatent’s priority areas for information technology development, along with a list of joint activities for digitalization.
• a draft comprehensive action plan for the development of Kyrgyzpatent’s information security for 2024–2026 was prepared.
• a draft package of documents for Kyrgyzpatent’s Information Security Management System was developed.
• 3 modern basic infrastructure and information security systems were deployed and configured, namely: the virtualization of servers based on a fault-tolerant cluster for the patent information systems of the national IP office; logical infrastructure on the main platform of the national IP office and in its branches; a single control center for the antivirus protection of workstations and servers. Access and update policies were developed and the examiner workstations were connected.

The following joint activities were carried out together with experts of the national IP office of Tajikistan to implement and configure basic information security management systems:

• a project for the implementation of a fault-tolerant cluster for the server virtualization system was developed.

• 3 modern basic infrastructure and information security systems were deployed and configured: a logical infrastructure; a single control center for the antivirus protection of workstations and servers; early response to incidents in the IT infrastructure and the monitoring of the operating parameters of server hardware and software. Access and update policies were developed and the examiner workstations were connected.

Activities were performed together with experts of the national IP office of Belarus to ensure the antivirus protection of all workstations.

With regard to the training of the IT experts of the national patent offices:

- a practical internship program was developed for IT experts of the national IP offices to create a secure and continuous infrastructure platform for the unified IT services of the EAPO and to implement the principles for the creation of integrated information security management systems in the national IP offices. The program also includes familiarization with the search databases used by the Eurasian Patent Office and visits to specialized conferences held in Moscow. An internship was held for IT experts of the national IP offices of Armenia and Tajikistan.

- a training course was selected for annual internships of IT experts of the national IP offices in dedicated educational institutions in Moscow.

In 2023, the Organization carried out its customary activities to provide high-speed Internet access via dedicated lines to the national IP offices of the EAPC Contracting States, which is intended for the maintenance and development of a common Eurasian patent information space, which is especially relevant in the implementation of the current strategy of close Eurasian integration.

Key Performance Indicators of the Eurasian Patent Office in Digitalization

Receipt of correspondence in digital form by applicants (representatives) under Eurasian patent procedure in 2023—92%.