Newsletter
PATENT RULES AMENDED
The 2003 amendments to the Patent Act will come into force on 1 July 2004, except for Arti-cle 11 and the abolition of criminal penalties, which have already taken effect. To prepare for the coming changes, on 7 April 2004 the Minis-try of Economic Affairs announced amendments to the Patent Act Enforcement Rules, which will also take effect on 1 July 2004. The main points are as follows:
In line with the changes in the provisions of the Patent Act on how claims should be for-mulated in invention and new utility model patent applications, the relevant provisions of the rules (on the formulation of independent and dependent claims) are also amended.
1.The requirements to submit additional copies of amended or corrected drawings, marked to indicate the points of alteration, are deleted.
2.A representative drawing of a new design may be indicated, instead of additionally submitting a drawing card as is currently required.
3.Recordation of various transactions in-volving patent rights may be applied for by a single party to such a transaction.
The Patent Act amendments include a switch to formality examination for new utility mod-els, and the introduction of new utility model technical reports. Accordingly, the amended rules include new provisions to regulate various matters concerning new utility model technical reports.
The Patent Act provides that after an exami-nation decision allowing the grant of a patent is rendered, the patent should be published once the relevant official fees have been paid. In practice, however, for various reasons, ap-plicants often have a need to delay the publi-cation. Therefore, the amended rules include new provisions to regulate the procedures when applying for a delay in publication, and to set the allowed periods of delay.