Patxml for writer instead of ms word

[HansS]

Hello

I am European Patent Attorney and write patents.
The EPO (European Patent Office) developed some time ago a free of charge tool “patxml” which is very handy for writing patents.
However, the EPO obliges citizens like me to use MS Word. The reason why is given here: http://www.epo.org/service-support/faq/online-services/patxml.html#faq-151
Maybe this is a naive question of me because I know a lot about chemistry but not about software.
Would it be possible to “convert” patxml so that it works on Writer of LibreOffice ?
You can look at/download patxml from this website
http://www.epo.org/applying/online-services/online-filing/auxiliary/patxml.html

Kind Regards,
Hans

[iplaw67]

To reply to Hans’ original question, yes, in theory, it would be possible to convert the VBA macros that add PatXML export used in Word to LO Writer, for example, as an extension. However, that would probably represent a significant challenge, and might possibly involve Windows/Office specific API calls that do not have an equivalent in LO’s API, which means that it wouldn’t then work, or would require some other workaround to achieve the same result.

Other approaches that could be envisaged :

• develop a XSLT export filter to export Writer documents directly to the XML accepted by the JPO/EPO/USPTO/WIPO ;

• use some other language (e.g. python, PHP) to manipulate ODT documents and output the content.xml to the required patXML format ;

• use XForms to allow for direct data entry and validation and output to patXML format.

Alex

[iplaw67]

Who would one have to contact to try and find out what happened to that project ? I tried e-mailing Gavin Lu at the Sun mail address, but rather unsurprisingly got no reply. I couldn’t see anything on the SIPO website, but then my Chinese is somewhat limited. The presentation report states that they were looking to develop an open source community around the developments made, but I guess that never happened, I certainly couldn’t find anything else in a recent search.

[Björgvin]

Yes, a similar thing was done 8 years ago for the Chinese Patent Office: http://www.openoffice.org/marketing/ooocon2004/presentations/patenteditor.pdf