Country Law

Introduction

Significant numbers of rules are built into the system ensuring that the user is given every assistance to maintain the quality and accuracy of the data - without these rules and safety checks the system would be no more than a simple data repository. Country Law provides base data which the rules use during data validation and task generation. It is therefore essential that the base data is accurate and properly maintained.

Note that some of the details below are specific to the xen-IP range. xen-SE stores the same basic information but in a more simplified form.

What is Country Law?

In Xensis terms Country Law is broken down into :

Patent Office/Trade Mark Office Details
Task Generation
Forms Generation

Patent Office/Trade Mark Office Details

The PO/TMO information is core to many of the date calculations within the system. Integrity of regional offices and their designations is essential for proper maintenance of application filing structures. The following is a summary of the data held:

name, address, contact details, currency
currently allowable designations, planned additions with accession dates
patent/trade mark term, calculated-from date reference
first annuity fee due, calculated-from date reference

Task Generation

Tasks are automatically generated which tell the patent attorney/trade mark professional and formalities/administrative staff what official actions have to occur following such things as filing an application. These are generated, dates calculated and put in the user's diary. The following is a summary of the base data held:

profile provided for each of the key verification stages for the combination of Patent Office/Trade Mark Office and IP type
what activities have to happen
who has to do them
when they have to happen (ie what dates are they calculated from)

Clients can change these standard profiles to include company specific tasks as required by their own business process.

Patent Office/Trade Mark Office Form Generation

Most of the key data required for the creation of official forms is output from the system via a comprehensive mail merge facility. Forms in either Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat/PDF format can be automatically generated from the system. Templates of some Patent Office/Trade Mark Office forms are supplied with the system, for selected countries, with the Xensis mail merge data mapped against them. Note that these are not necessarily the latest versions of the forms.

Instructions are also provided to allow clients to produce any type of the their own forms, should they be required (eg. forms for internal usage or for countries requiring updates to new format forms).

Annuity Law (xen-IP range only)

Xensis do not provide any Annuity Renewal Law (law pertaining to annuity payments) as part of the system since electronic interfaces exist to the leading annuity agencies. Some law is built into the system (such as renewal terms stored against Patent Offices and Trade Mark Offices) which gives the system enough intelligence to know when to transfer information to the annuity agency - once the data is transfers into the agency systems then the data is stringently checked against their detailed law. Clients wishing to make annuity payments directly themselves can produce reports out of the system to assist them.