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Five IP Offices announce shared vision on cooperative framework
31 October 2008
At a meeting on 27and 28 October in Jeju, Korea, the heads of world's five major intellectual property offices discussed a unified approach to a work sharing initiative to address common challenges.
Chaired by Dr. Jung-Sik Koh, Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the meeting between the KIPO, the European Patent Office (EPO) the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) resulted in a historic Vision Statement for future cooperation among the five offices.
The declared aims of the Vision Statement are:
- Elimination of unnecessary duplication of work among the offices
- Enhancement of patent examination efficiency and quality
- Guarantee of the stability of international patent rights
The vision serves as a basis for setting up a cooperative framework in the form of ten Foundation Projects which are expected to facilitate the work sharing initiative.
Answers for a globalised economy
International trade barriers are decreasing and a growing number of inventors aim to protect their Intellectual Property in several parts of the world. As a result, applications for the same invention are often filed in more than one patent office, which leads to. redundant search and examination work on the same patent at separate offices.
Currently up to 250 000 applications are filed at two or more of the five offices per year where work could be reutilized by another office. This situation leads to a growing number of pending patent applications and prolonged pendency periods. According to the office heads, the delay in granting patents also hinders the promotion of innovation which is an intrinsic function of the patent system.
The solution lies in an integrated sharing of resources and infrastructure among the offices. This will create important synergy effects, including enhancing the quality of patent examinations on duplicate applications and heightening the overall efficiency of the patenting process at lower cost.
For patent applicants, this will mean substantial benefits such as quicker processing and increased savings.
Foundation Projects for a work sharing infrastructure
To secure the necessary infrastructure, the five patent offices will each lead two of a total of ten Foundation Projects over the coming years. The projects aim to harmonise the global environment for patent searches and examination and to enable work-sharing among the five offices.
The designated offices and their projects are as follows:
- European Patent Office (EPO): Common Documentation Database with resource material for patent examination and Common Approach for a Hybrid Classification of patents across offices.
- Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO): Common Training Policy for patent examiners and Mutual Machine Translation to overcome language barriers.
- Japan Patent Office (JPO): Common Access to Search and Examination Results across offices and Common Application Format to ensure that patents are digitally filed in XML-format.
- State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO): Common Rules for Examination Practice and Quality Control to harmonise patent quality standards and Common Statistical Parameter System for Examination for accurate international patent statistics.
- United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO): Common Approach to Sharing and Documenting Search Strategies and Common Search and Examination Support Tools in a shared system.
The project's progress will be closely monitored and discussed at follow-up meetings throughout the next year. Dates of the events and further developments will be announced online in due time.
Further information