In the period of November 30 – 1 December, 2010, in the city of Casablanca, Kingdom of Morocco, was held the regional seminar entitled “Publication of patent information in the national intellectual property offices. Research - Documentation Tools”, organized by the European Patent Office with the support of the Moroccan Industrial and Commercial Property Office (MICPO). The event was also attended by the delegation of the State Agency on Intellectual Property.

The seminar was aimed at reviewing the various methods and technologies of publishing the patent information, used by intellectual property offices in the Arab states from the southern neighborhood of the European Union (EU) and identifying the best solutions and practices for providing a single platform that would facilitate exchange of experience and information in this field among all regional offices and other national, international and regional specialized institutions, including EPO and WIPO.

Besides representatives of the Moroccan Office, the seminar was attended by experts in the field of patents and information technologies from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia, the Eastern European area (Georgia and Republic of Moldova), African Intellectual Property Organization (OAPI) established in Cameroon and the European Patent Organization based in Munich.

Representatives of intellectual property offices from Georgia and Republic of Moldova have been invited to this event to present the tools used to ensure the examination-patenting and publication process, the formulas of regional cooperation in the EU eastern neighborhood space, methods and technologies used for the qualitative exchange of data and experience, mutually beneficial for the actors involved.

In the seminar was presented a series of instruments developed by the European Patent Office (EPO) for the unification and lifting of the quality of publication and exchange of patent information. Thus, MICPO who benefited by the EPO support for the purchase and implementation within its own technological system of the European applications, intended for publication of patent information, presented its new portal, developed in partnership with EPO.

The second part of the seminar was dedicated to some practical activities of using the EPO database search tools for the purposes of patent search. It should be mentioned that AGEPI was selected by the EPO as the pilot office for testing a new application, namely the GPI search tool, AGEPI supposing to decide at the end of 2011 on the utility and quality of the new program.

Following the discussions on the usefulness and appropriateness of such events it has been agreed on the need for further cooperation at both regional and interregional level to familiarize with the best practices in the field, but also to optimize the efficiency of the investments made by each office in part and to examine the possibilities of sharing the costs necessary to develop certain advanced applications, thus ensuring uniformity of platforms used for the publication and exchange of patent information.