Dear Readers,
The State Office for Inventions and Trademarks continued, by its initiatives and activities carried out in 2023, to exert its role of unique authority on the Romanian territory in the field of ensuring the industrial property protection and encouraging innovation and competitiveness.
I would like to present here the Annual Report of OSIM activity for the year 2023. It comprises our main achievements and reflects the entire range of events and actions we carried out last year.
Among the most significant results achieved last year, I would like to mention:
Establishing the new Division for Invalidity - Loss of rights within Legal Directorate of OSIM, as a consequence of amending and completing the Government Decision No. 573/1998 on the organization and functioning of OSIM, by GD no. 389/2023, as published in the Official Gazette No. 368 of 28th of April 2023.
Even though 2023 was a challenging year for all the sectors of the economy and industry, we scored a slight increase of the number of applications filed with OSIM in its three fields: patents, trademarks, designs, as compared to the previous year. Thus, in 2023 the number of trademark applications filed by national route was 12269, showing an increase of 12.98% as compared to 2022. At the same time, a number of 12302 trademark registration applications filed by national route were examined in 2023, 12.81% more than in 2022.
A slight increase may be noticed, as well, in the number of patent applications filed with OSIM in 2023, from 843 to 889 applications. In this context, 314 patents were issued in 2023, 303 belonging to Romanian owners and 11 to foreign owners.
Last year, 654 designs with 2009 graphic representations were filed for registration with OSIM and 342 design certificates were issued.
The cooperation with international, regional and European intellectual property organizations, such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the European Patent Office (EPO) and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) as well as with national offices, especially the State Agency on Intellectual Property (AGEPI) from the Republic of Moldova, continued in 2023.
OSIM specialists were involved in several cooperation projects, among which it is worth mentioning the Back-Office system optimization project, by means of which the trademark invalidity files were integrated in the system, a new phase thereof being successfully completed in 2023 and resulting in an extension of the system functionality and an improvement of the operational effectiveness of our organization, in this area.
OSIM also actively participated in the EPO pilot project „ANSERA” for a modern search system, which aims at the replacement of the current system „EPOQUENET” that has been used by the Member States for a very long time. With the support of EPO specialists, OSIM joined the other participating national offices and started to test the new search instrument.
By participating in specialized exhibitions, by organizing and participating in seminars, round tables and various conferences on subjects relating to industrial property protection, OSIM aimed in 2023, like in the previous years, to promote the importance of industrial property rights protection in the academic and business environment and to increase awareness of the way people can protect the result of their creations.
I conclude by inviting you to go through the pages of the Annual Report 2023, that shows the accomplishments of the whole team of OSIM, the members of which aim to become better and better each day and to meet the needs of our applicants despite all the impediments.
Marian-Octavian ŞERBĂNESCU,
Director General