COMMERCIAL 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.