On September 8, the Patent Office of the Republic of Latvia (LPO) implemented the European Cooperation Project “Capture and Store Historical Files” of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), by completing digitisation process of trademarks and designs dossiers. In total, 97,165 dossiers were digitised.
By implementing this project, the LPO has taken further steps in the digitisation of its activities and is closer to introducing the principles of paperless office in terms of document circulation. The main benefit of this project is an accessibility of dossiers within the LPO document circulation system, which means that these documents are available on daily basis regardless of the physical location of the employees of the LPO, these documents can also be used at the same time by several employees, and it also allows automatization of several tools and internal processes.
The LPO in cooperation with the EUIPO began the digitisation process in September 2020. Regardless of Covid-19 challenges, the LPO, the EUIPO and the service providers were able to cooperate and complete the digitisation project on time.
Over than 1,514,000 pages related to trademarks and design registration were digitised. The next steps of the LPO towards the introduction of the paperless office principles will involve scanning and digitising patents and related documents, so that, in the coming months, the LPO will be even closer to its objective of reducing paper usage within the office in order to minimise the impact on the environment and to ensure successful performance at a time when remote work is a commonplace.
The process of digitisation was carried out within the framework of EUIPO ECP5 project: Capture and Store Historical Files (CSHF). The CSHF project aims at digitising paper dossiers across EU (European Union) national Intellectual Property Offices to enable easy and rapid access to documentation and data related to trademark and design dossiers.