Enhancing the Intellectual Property Adjudication System by Developing the IP Case e-Filing System

Abstract

This project was conceptualized to enhance the delivery of intellectual property (IP) adjudication services by developing a web-based system for the electronic filing of Inter Partes cases lodged with the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) through the Bureau of Legal Affairs (BLA). Although the IPOPHL presently has a LAN-based computerized system called the IP Adjudication System (IPAAdj) that helps in the administration of IP cases, top management sees the need to improve client services further by providing an online system for the filing of Inter Partes cases or those which are between specified parties only, in this case an IP owned and probable IP right infringer. This project involves development of a Proof-of-Concept (POC) for the ‘IP Case E-Filing System’ (or IP e-Filing for short), an alternative mode to the existing face-to-face onsite filing. Upon its roll-out to live implementation, it will be integrated with the IPAdj cases management system. As it turned out, the POC prototyped was successful in receiving online filing, e-payment and scanned supporting documents while providing a facility to view the status of a client’s filed case/s. The project was developed using a Mac-Apache-MySQL-PHP (MAMP) web development platform and Drupal v.7, an open-source Content Management System customized through PHP programming. No major capital expenditures were incurred in developing the POC. Moving the system into production mode will entail co-sharing the expense for newly acquired servers costing about P1.2Million with an annual maintenance cost of about P180, 000 for the next 3 years. The POC project was completed in 3-1/2 months starting June 18, 2013.