The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IP Philippines) will update its digital database for patents and trademarks documents registered with the office from 1931 to 2007. The P7.28 million-digitization project will be partly financed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) as part of the IP Philippines-WIPO bilateral cooperation program for 2008 to 2010.

“Two million pages of patent and trademark information will be placed in digital format that will be easily accessible to the public through the Internet. Anyone can access this valuable information online,” Atty. Adrian S. Cristobal, Jr., Director General of IP Philippines, said.
“Technological information from patents will be available to inventors, scientists and researchers so they can innovate upon existing technology,” he added.
 
The digitization project, which has four phases, will provide an efficient system of storage, access, and retrieval of documents on granted patents for inventions, innovation patent or utility models, and design patent or industrial designs from 1948 to November 2007. Withdrawn and published patent for the same period are also in the database.

Registered trademarks from 1931 to 2007 are also included in the project. The digital documents will then be uploaded to the Philippine Patent Online Search System (PhilPAT) and Trademark (TM) Search under the e-services in the IP Philippines website.

Currently, PhilPAT contains bibliographic data of granted inventive patents, innovation patents and design patents from 1948 to the present, and published patent applications from 1998 to the present. The bibliographic data includes, among others, the abstract, and representative drawings of the invention, filing date, the name of the inventors, applicant or assignee, and the current standing of the patent.

 

A patent is an exclusive right to manufacture, sell and commercialize a product, process, or an improvement of a product or process granted by the State (through IP Philippines) to an inventor over a specified period. In return for this exclusive right, the patent owner discloses all information on his invention in the patent application for the public to access.  

Apart from the digitization project, the IP Philippines-WIPO Development Plan covers activities in seven other areas: the Philippine IP Policy Strategy (PIPPS); Technology Transfer and Commercialization; IP and Development; IP Research and Training Institute (IPRTI); Institutional and Capacity-Building; IP and Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) and; Creative Industries.