IP Australia, which encompasses the Australian Patent, Trade Marks and Designs offices, is commencing one of its periodic reviews of the fees charged for its services, such as filing and registration of applications.According to an email notification issued by IP Australia:
The purpose of IP Australia’s 2011 Fee Review is to assess the existing IP Australia cost recovery arrangements in accordance with the Australian Government Cost Recovery Guidelines 2005 and ensure that fees and charges are transparent and consistent with the Australian Government cost recovery policy.
The objectives of the 2011 Fee Review is [sic] to:
- Maintain the on-going viability of IP Australia while keeping the cost of services low
- Maximise innovation in Australia through a fee structure that promotes the economic value of IP Rights
- Simplify and streamline the fee structure by:
o keeping fee structures as simple as possible with minimal changes
over timeo reducing the administrative burden on customers while achieving
improvements in operational efficiency within IP Australia, ando increasing parity and uniformity in fees across product lines
- Ensure fees remain internationally competitive
Once the review is complete, details of any proposed changes will be published for comment on the IP Australia web site.
It is anticipated that any changes in fees will take effect from 1 July 2012.
IP Australia is inviting feedback and/or comments, which may be sent via email to FeeReview@ipaustralia.gov.au.
IP AUSTRALIA WEB SITE REVAMPED
Interested readers who have not yet seen the new IP Australia web site which has recently been launched should visit http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/. The revamped web site is, in our opinion, a great improvement in terms of both appearance and organisation. We particularly like the new ‘IP Professionals Portal’, which brings together links to many of our most-used areas of the site.The one downside to the revamp is that many links pointing to information on the old site are now broken. This will, unfortunately, impact on a number of earlier Patentology articles. Obviously some of these are no longer timely, and will not be worth fixing. Please let us know if you encounter any broken links on the blog that you believe remain relevant and should be updated.
Before You Go…
Thank you for reading this article to the end – I hope you enjoyed it, and found it useful. Almost every article I post here takes a few hours of my time to research and write, and I have never felt the need to ask for anything in return.
But now – for the first, and perhaps only, time – I am asking for a favour. If you are a patent attorney, examiner, or other professional who is experienced in reading and interpreting patent claims, I could really use your help with my PhD research. My project involves applying artificial intelligence to analyse patent claim scope systematically, with the goal of better understanding how different legal and regulatory choices influence the boundaries of patent protection. But I need data to train my models, and that is where you can potentially assist me. If every qualified person who reads this request could spare just a couple of hours over the next few weeks, I could gather all the data I need.
The task itself is straightforward and web-based – I am asking participants to compare pairs of patent claims and evaluate their relative scope, using an online application that I have designed and implemented over the past few months. No special knowledge is required beyond the ability to read and understand patent claims in technical fields with which you are familiar. You might even find it to be fun!
There is more information on the project website, at claimscopeproject.net. In particular, you can read:
- a detailed description of the study, its goals and benefits; and
- instructions for the use of the online claim comparison application.
Thank you for considering this request!
Mark Summerfield
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