The construction of the paperless system in Japan Patent Office

The paperless system of the Japan Patent Office aims to digitize all kinds of documents of the Patent Office. This system, to guarantee free access to external users, has been developed as an open system which is based on OSI. The authors give a detailed explanation about the protocol configuration and document format. The upper layer protocol (which is called `Pp protocol´) of the application layer is originated for the paperless system to ensure real time interactive communications of patent documents between host computers and terminals. Patent application information, which is a mixture of code data and image data, is described as a part of the Pp protocol