World Patent Information, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 175-177, 1992. Printed in Great Britain.

0172-2190/92$5.00+ .OO. Pergamon Press Ltd

CECIWIPO

Patent Information at the Centre for Information Sciences, Zagreb, Croatia

Mladen Vukmir, Attorney-at-Law, Pavia, Ansaldo e Verusio, Milan, Italy

Summary

Croatia, on becoming an independent state, is faced with great problems in setting up an intellectual property organization. These are outlined and the existing centres which will probably form the nucleus of the new organization are described.

The events presently unfolding on the territory of former Yugoslavia are complex to comprehend, and so is the assessment of the legal situation. Weekly changes instantly devalue any long-term predictions. Consequently, it is hard to render an overview of the situation in the field of patent protection. The disintegration of the former federal legal system necessarily diminishes the importance of the discussion of the specialized fields, such as patent information. However, the general importance of that issue is not diminished, and it is possible to preview a new role for the institutions collecting and disseminating patent information in the process of the creation of a new intellectual property system.

The events tearing apart the former Yugoslav federation can be characterized as being parts of the two outstanding global processes. First, the turbulent events caused by the end of the communist era are generally similar to the complex changes in Eastern and Central Europe. Second, the emerging states on the territory of former Yugoslavia are inevitably inheriting the elements of the economic position of the former federation as a developing country.

Accordingly, the problems which Croatia is now facing, are at least twofold. (Croatia is one of the six states that constituted former Yugoslavia.) The problems that appear to be typical for some other post-communist countries represent the first prong. These may be broadly determined as the problems of implementing the planned legal changes at the desired pace, when any discordance with the optimal schedule seems to lead towards further disintegration of the existing legal system, with the consequence that there is increasingly less and less political power and technical means left to enforce the newly implemented laws. Such a

scheme unfolded before us in the case of the dissolution of the former federation, and it is to be hoped that the new states, such as Croatia, will find the resources to build their legal systems anew without further upheavals.

The second prong is related to the problems of the scarce economic and financial resources. These, in return, sometimes tend to provoke the attitudes similar to some developing countries’ attitudes towards intellectual property, i.e. underestimating its importance. In Croatia, fortunately, the second is generally moderated by the market-oriented political program of the recent government. As a consequence there are no hostile attitudes towards the patent system, but there may be misunderstandings of its functions or slowdown in its implementation. Combined, the two groups of problems make an effort to build a new intellectual property protection system a complex and burdensome task, despite the recognition of its general importance and structure.

In Croatia, some of the problems are exemplified, while others are not necessarily expressed in their sharpest form. Presently, the laws enacted regulating intellectual property are, by and large, the laws of the former federation. Yugoslavia underwent reconstruction of its intellectual property laws shortly before its break-up. This process made its patent law compatible with the Patent Cooperation Treaty requirements, and its former developing country’s patent policy was abandoned (for example, the duration of patents which used to be only seven plus seven years was changed to 20 years).

While it may not be a problem for a country to build a legislative network necessary for intellectual property protection, to put in motion such a complex organism as an efficient patent system is a task that requires assistance. With a degree of certainty it can be concluded that this cannot be achieved without ample expert and financial aid.

In the situation when the legal system ceases to exist, the countries have no choice but to opt for the development of their own protection systems. In Croatia, for instance, the former Federal Patent Office refused to process the claims from the territory of Croatia or Slovenia during the second half of

176 M. Vukmir

1991, and it became increasingly clear that Croatia will need its own intellectual property protection system. As the first solution the old federal act on inventions and trademarks was enacted, together with the copyright act, as the laws of the new state. Presently it is still questionable whether the existing registrations of intellectual property rights in the former federal patent office are valid on the territory of Croatia. Once the new European countries of comparable size, such as Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia or Croatia decide how to organize their intellectual property systems, the biggest problem is how to set the chosen solution into operative mode. In such a situation the expertise concentrated in the patent documentation and on-line research centres may be serving as an essential first step towards the development of operative intellectual property protection systems.

The newly emerging European countries will have to find a mode for building their own patent systems, or incorporating their territories into other systems - at least for temporary periods. It is indicative in that respect that the solution preferred by non- governmental advisors in Croatia shortly before its recognition was for a unilateral extension of the validity of the European patent on its territory.

Recently, the first steps have been undertaken in order to set up an intellectual property protection system in Croatia. On 31 December 1991 the “Act on Changes and Additions to the Act on the Republic Administration” came into force establishing the Office for Industrial Property. The articles 9 and 10 of the Act provide for the establishment of an institution entrusted with administrating the protection of inventions, technical advancements, industrial marks and other signs of origin of goods, models and designs, as well as the collection and processing of patent documentation and administration of international treaties and other special legal regula- tions. The Office is a legal entity, and is taking over the Croatian personnel of the former Federal Patent Office working in Croatia.

When Croatia starts developing its own functioning patent system it will most probably turn to the competent international bodies, and in parallel utilize its scientific centres having experience in the field. Among such centres the leader in Croatia is the “Institut informacijskih znanosti” (“The Institute for the Information Sciences” - IIS) in Zagreb (formerly “Referral Centre of the University of Zagreb”), having almost 20 years’ exposure to patent information processing. Between its numerous departments two of them are able to provide

*know-how and serve as the organizational nuclei for such a task.

The “Centar za on-line pretrazivanje baza i banaka podataka” (“The Centre for On-line Search of

Databases” - CSD) is a department of the IIS. It was founded in 1972, and developed over the years in several steps and commenced with Chemical Abstracts Service as its main supplier of information. Until 1974 it was getting only bibliographic references on the magnetic tapes (CACon and CT databases). Subsequently, CAS information expanded so as also to include patent information, thus promoting CSD into a patent information institution.

A significant step forward was made at the end of 1982, when CSD stopped using magnetic tapes, and decided to contract its first on-line host. It was ESA- IRS (European Space Agency Information Retrieval Service), through which CSD was able to access about 100 different databases. By 1985 CSD switched completely to on-line information retrieval. Even if the connections were technically inadequate, CSD moved ahead and was constantly upgrading its technical base, as well as the number of the accessible databases. CSD gained access to databases containing medical, business and financial databases first through DATA STAR, and then through the ECHO (European Commission Host Organisation). Subscriptions were made for the following databases: DIALOG, IAEA gateways, Pergamon Info Line, INIS and AGMIS, STN International, Computer Centre of the University in Maribor, as a Yugoslav host. Altogether, today CSD has access to over 700 different databases, including patent databases, such as INPADOC and Derwent.

Its almost exclusive market position in Croatia made its operators constantly exposed to working with a number of databases, and their scrupulous preparations in advance of the on-line searches made them into trustworthy information brokers. The average yearly number of searches is about 1200. Extremely competitive prices they are able to offer originate from the fact that they are still partially subsidised by the Croatian Government’s fund for scientific activities (“Fond za znanstveni rad”), while the user is paying only the raw costs of the access to the database and the telecommunications costs. During the transitory period in which the state is withdrawing from many of its former functions, CSD is trying to develop the market for its services by means of organizing seminars. CSD discovered that explaining, via the seminars or by visiting potential users while organizing the demonstrations, is the best way of creating the demand on a non-existing market. Their biggest customers were two large Croatian enterprises, one in the mechanical and electronic engineering sector, and the other in the chemical and pharmaceutical sector. Other permanent consumers were largely from the scientific field, not directly connected to industry. However, the bigger industries’ interests and needs vary very much depending on the varying and ever deteriorating economic situation due to the

Patent Information at the Centre for Information Sciences 177

war in which Croatia found itself immersed against its own will. The biggest number of customers in the scientific fields are from chemical sciences, chemical industry, medical sciences, medical services, electronic tech- nical and mechanical engineering. Users were from the territory of the whole former Yugoslavia, and somewhat less from Slovenia which had its own research centres.

Its next-door neighbour is the “Indok za patentne informacije” (“Indoc for patent information” - IPI), under the able guidance of Dr Helena Pavic, also a part of the IIS. If CSD is the starting point for all types of modern patent research, IPI is an institution that provides more specialized patent services. IPI has its own access to the DERWENT database, as well as to ORBIT, DIALOG and SDC. Its advantage is the patent library of documents collected during 1.5 years from 30 sources. (Twenty nine of them being national patent offices, and the 30th the European Patent Office.) The collection includes also the PCT reports in bulletins with 50-150 word abstracts. The library includes all areas, fields and patent families, including formulae and schematic representations. It is stored on microfiches, microfilms and paper medium. The input in the library is about 1 000 000 patents yearly. This collection is one of its kind on the territory of the former Yugoslavia, and it used to be open to all users. One of the notable results of its output is an English - Croatian dictionary of patent terms comprising 34 000 entries.

Without further discussion we may conclude that this formidable collection may, if properly incorporated in the infrastructure, serve as the basis of the future patent system in Croatia. And, indeed, the early initiatives were coming out of IPI for preparatory work on organization of the Croatian patent system in the form of articles, activity coordination, and recently, organization of a workshop. The CSD and IPI addresses are:

Institute for Information Sciences Mr Tibor T&h, MSC Department for On-line Information retrieval Trg marsala Tita 3 - P.O. Box 327 41001 Zagreb Croatia

Telephone: (+3841) 420 638 Facsimile: (+3841) 427 903 Telex: 22 486 RCSZGH.

Institute for Information Sciences Dr Helena Pavic Department for Patent Documentation Trg marsala Tita 3 - P.O. Box 327 41001 Zagreb Croatia

Telephone: (+3841) 420 630 and 420 634 Facsimile: (+3841) 427 903 Telex: 22 486 RCSZGH.