Survey of the annual technical reports on patent information activities in the year 2000 (Part 2: J-Z)

The activities in the year 2000 of some 26 intellectual property offices and organisations worldwide in the field of patent information are summarised. The summary is presented under nine standard headings, as far as relevant, for each country. Activity varies enormously from just a handful of (national) applications through to RU (~29 K), KR (~139 K), US (~296 K) and JP (~437 K), the numbers continuing to increase significantly in most countries. This is the second of two parts, covering in total 50 countries and organisations; this part deals with those having WIPO codes starting J-Z. The author concludes, inter alia, that the backlogs of patent applications increased further, as granting or registration activities of many IP Offices failed to keep up with input; the pace of implementation of electronic filing systems accelerated; the importance of Official Gazettes in paper form for the dissemination of information on patents declined further; English language abstracts of newly filed applications continued to be prepared by IP Offices that work in not easily accessible languages, e.g. HU, JP, KR, RU, SK and VN; the IPC, or derivatives such as ECLA, remained the primary tool for allocation, classification, and search in almost all IP Offices; automated search systems continued to be developed and used, in tandem with manual search files, commercial and free Internet online databases; and the use of complex jukebox systems to handle the vast numbers of patent specifications on CD-ROM increased again in 2000.