On July 3, 2018, a meeting took place between the members of the Association of Patent Attorneys of Latvia (LPPA) and experts of the Latvian Patent Office (LPO). During the meeting, possible improvements to the LPO services were discussed as well as the current issues in the field of patent, trademark and design protection.
In order to strengthen the cooperation and facilitate the exchange of opinions between the industry experts as well as to improve the quality of services in the field of industrial property (IP) protection, annual meetings are organized between the LPPA members and the LPO experts.
During the last meeting, the attention was focused on the LPO’s priority activities including the future improvements to the services related to patents, trademarks and designs. Special attention was devoted to the development of existing e-services – in particular, the development of a new patent information system, which is currently going under active development phase. The meeting also addressed the procedural issues – from IP registration to appeal.
The statistics presented at the meeting showed, according to the LPO experts, a record number of national and international trademark applications as well as design applications filed in the first half of the year.
The meeting also highlighted the successful results of the EPO and LPO joint pilot-project on conducting patent searches for national applications. In total, LPO has received 33 applications, of which 23 have been sent to the European Patent Office, whereas for 16 applications search reports have already been prepared. In 11 reports it was indicated that the invention is new and it meets the inventive step.
At the end of 2017, LPO started the implementation of the ISO 9001:2015 standard. It is expected that it will significantly improve the institution`s internal management processes from registration of IP rights to post-registration procedures. In order to ensure the quality of the services and their provision to the end-users, each year LPO performs customer satisfaction measurements. The results of the customer satisfaction survey launched in 2017 show that 85 % users are mostly and completely satisfied with the LPO`s services. More than half of the respondents (54%) are entrepreneurs, followed by lawyers (12%), patent attorneys (11%), and others.
The obtained data show that 55 % of the respondents see the exclusive rights provided by the gained protection as the main benefit of IP registration. Slightly fewer respondents (25%) indicated that the acquired exclusive rights were used as a marketing tool mainly – for the creation of a positive image of the company.
In turn, before registering their rights, 96% of users have made prior research to determine if their intellectual property is new and does not violate others’ rights.
The participants evaluated the results of the meeting discussions as positive and it was decided from now on to organize such meetings twice a year.
Prepared by:
Santa Lozda
Leading advisor
Patent Office of the Republic of Latvia
Phone: 67227310
e-mail: santa.lozda@lrpv.gov.lv