The state of patent information in Hungary

Abstract

Under the present system of economic guidance, patent information is to play an ever more important role. The central agency of patent information is the National Office of Inventions with its library, documentation, reprographic and press services. Only few companies, R&D institutes have patent collections of their own and pursue information activities to meet their own needs.

The three main fields for the use of patent information are:
exploration of the state of patents: information on valid patent rights of others;
exploration of patent perspective: information on the application of others for patents, i.e. on patents to which no letters have been granted up to the present;
the use of special literature which is “open” for use from legal aspect.

The documentary processing of technical patent literature includes the analysis of patent specifications: the first step is to determine descriptors for the subject of the patent, then a chain of concepts has to be constructed out of these descriptors or concepts.