VI. Digital delivery of intellectual property services

430 It is clear that developments in digital technologies, and the inter and intranets that they support, have enabled private and public sector enterprises to overhaul their methods for conducting their operations, redefine their services and improve their service delivery. This move toward using digital systems and the Internet to manage work flow, deliver services and provide enhanced access and interconnection to intellectual property information has been embraced by an increasing number of national and regional intellectual property offices. In particular, the intellectual property community is increasingly utilizing these technological advances to better exploit, defend and administer their intellectual property rights. These systems improve not only the procedures through which such rights are acquired and maintained, but increasingly also serve to disseminate information about intellectual property more efficiently and effectively.

431 In common among these initiatives are the issues of integrating new staff with relevant technological expertise, while restructuring existing staff resources; planning for the integration of the new information technology systems; implementing hardware and software platforms, many of which can be costly; addressing security concerns with respect to access, control and exchange of information that become manifest in the digital environment; and reviewing whether the existing policies, procedures, rules and standards must be revised and updated in light of the new electronic methods used.⁵⁶⁶ This Chapter will examine how a number of these offices are employing the new technologies to transform their delivery of services.

432 This Chapter also provides information about the new electronic systems that WIPO is implementing to improve its services. The development of these new systems, as the Director General noted in a message to WIPO’s Standing Committee on Information Technologies, “implies a fundamental change in the time-honored way of doing things.”⁵⁶⁷ First, the WIPONET is featured, an online global information network providing connectivity and secure communication channels for the digital delivery of services and information in relation to several initiatives that WIPO has already commenced. Secondly, the Chapter reviews progress toward the use of electronic means for the delivery of services under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), the Madrid Agreement and its Protocol, and the Hague Agreement. These systems have already proven their success at facilitating intellectual property owners’ ability to obtain and maintain protection in a large number of countries through a centralized procedure. With the new technologies available, they can now be

re-engineered or further developed to profit from the efficiency gains offered by information technology and digital networks.

(I) developments in national intellectual property offices (a) Traditional Intellectual Property Office Administration

433 Traditionally, intellectual property offices throughout the world have administered complex procedures and voluminous workloads in handling the filing and processing of requests for registration of intellectual property rights. These workloads are increasing and the administrative procedures are intensive. For example, when an application for a trademark is filed, its formality is checked and, in certain jurisdictions, examined. Upon examination, examiners are required to make a search. The decision is sent to the applicant. The applicant may appeal the result, and a third party may oppose the grant. Finally, an intellectual property office must ensure that its fees are collected, maintain public records of its files, and archive each dossier.

434 As the relevance of intellectual property increases, so does the number of applications proliferate, as demonstrated by the experience of the various intellectual property offices, described below. Traditional procedures based on paper documentation and manual systems are unsuited to cope with such a demand. As a result, in a pattern common to many intellectual property offices, backlogs have formed and, consequently, examination periods and the delays experienced by consumers have increased proportionally. The paper-based system has been unable to overcome the combined challenges of inefficient administrative methods, rapid flow of documents and the physical need to secure sufficient operating space. Therefore, the intellectual property offices have sought to tackle this problem, and the most efficient gains have been found in utilization of new information technologies.