PATENT DATABASE ACCESS

Trade Agreement: Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) Tendering Procedures: All interested suppliers may submit a bid Attachment: None Competitive Procurement Strategy: Best Overall Proposal Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement: No Nature of Requirements: Commercial Patent Database Access

1. BACKGROUND

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), a Special Operating Agency of Industry Canada, administers Canada's intellectual property (IP) systems comprising Patents, Trade-marks, Copyrights, Industrial Designs and Integrated Circuit Topographies. Its primary clients include: applicants for IP protection, agents representing applicants, exploiters of IP systems and the Canadian business community.

CIPO and more specifically the Patent Branch, has the mandate of examining patents application. Examiners advise applicants on whether or not their respective applications comply with the Patent Act and the Patent Rules, assess their responses and then recommend the granting or refusal of a patent. In order to do so, patent examiners must be able to perform high quality searches in various fields of technology in order to ensure that issued patents are novel and demonstrate inventive ingenuity.

To be effective, examiners must be able to search patent databases offering global patent data coverage. A flexible and powerful search engine that displays results in an optimal way is essential. Examiners must rapidly and accurately evaluate the results of their searches to determine if they are relevant and if so, discuss these in a report communicated to an applicant in relation to a patent application.

2. SCOPE OF WORK

Patent examination requires that examiners undertake detailed analysis of technical documents in short time frames. To determine the relevance of these documents, examiners must be provided with tools that allow the review of key document characteristics. It is the role of the examiner to quickly determine the similarities of a prior art document to the subject matter of the patent application under review. Often, the time available to perform a basic review is measured in seconds per document, so the efficiency of any patent database used for examination will depend on the features of its user interface.

Patent examiners require an interface that clearly combines and presents the information they seek in a format that is meaningful at a glance. An interface should provide a level of interaction that produces results rapidly, and which consolidates user driven changes to the information presented in the interface without the need to wait for the widespread reloading or resending of image data and text material that would otherwise reduce the usability of the tool and limit the effectiveness of examination in a time sensitive patent examination environment.

The service would be available during specific periods from a Web Browser type interface; would have to be accessible from anywhere via Internet; would permit downloading of multiple patent documents in a PDF format in a timely manner; and would offer coverage which meets or exceeds the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) minimum documentation requirement. Further, the service would meet performance requirements which provide examiners with comprehensive results in a minimum time span. Delivery Date: Above-mentioned

The Crown retains the right to negotiate with suppliers on any procurement.

Documents may be submitted in either official language of Canada.