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The Estonian Patent Library is a public library. Our basic function is collecting, storing and making available for public the stock of the domestic and foreign documents in the area of protection of the industrial property. Our stock and online search possibilities guarantee the possibility of carrying out examination to novelty and state of art of the applications for registering the subjects of legal protection of industrial property by the Estonian Patent Office as well as for research purposes. Our library belongs to the area of government of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and and Communications and is financed from the state budget and from non-budgetary resources earned by the library itself. Even as our patent library and patent office do not form a joint institution (it takes about 10 minutes to walk from the Estonian Patent Library to the Estonian Patent Office) - still we work in close cooperation. If you need any help in getting assistance in the sophisticated field concerning protection of industrial property (for example classifying your technical field) do not hesitate to contact us - we are glad to serve you. Some of Estonian legislation in English is available at http://www.legaltext.ee/indexen.htm, this is a free of charge service. If you are interested in the Estonian patent specifications published during the first independence period in 1918-1940 (collection No 916 of the State Archives), you have to order the needed documents (at least 3 days before) by phone +372 693 8668 or by e-mail lugemissaal.mad@ra.ee. Their reading room at Madara 24 is open on Mon - Fri 9-19 (except last working day of each month - closed). Additional information on the website of the State Archives . About our history: The Estonian Patent Office was founded in the first independence period of Estonia (1918-1940) on May 23, 1919. According to the first Estonian patent law the global novelty search was not performed and there was no foreign patent document collection. In the Soviet period (1940-1991) the Estonian Patent Office was liquidated, yet the collection of patent documents was founded in the patent department of Central Bureau of Technical Information in 1963. The location of this bureau was in Tallinn in Pirita Road. By the end of 1967 there were 1,3 million Soviet and foreign patent documents in the collection. In 1968 the Estonian Technical Library was founded. It also included a patent department. All the 1,3 million patent documents acquired by the Central Bureau of the Technical Information were handed over to the new library by a government decree. In 1975 two buildings in Olevimaegi Street (Nr. 8 and 10) were given to the Estonian Technical Library for accommodating the patent department. The whole patent collection (3 million documents by that time) was moved into the new location. During 1968-1991 the only way to obtain patent literature was through the Russian (then Soviet) production plant "Patent" and the scientific production association "Poisk". That is the reason why the stock of Russian (Soviet) patent documents was the only almost complete collection while the collections of the patent literature of all other countries contained considerable gaps. When Estonia restored its independence in 1991, it became obvious that a new industrial property protection system was needed and so on Dec 3, 1991 the Estonian Patent Office was re-established and on Jan 1, 1992 the Estonian Patent Library was established. The collection of patent documents and patent literature of the Estonian Technical Library which by that time had grown to 11 million units was the basis for organizing a separate patent library. After regaining of independence it became possible to establish direct contacts with the patent offices of the most important industrial countries. It has helped us to eliminate the gaps in our collection and also to obtain documents of countries, which we had not been able to acquire before (United Kingdom, Japan, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark etc). We got a lot of help from our Finnish and Sweden colleagues.
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