Co-operation with China reaches new heights

7 December 2012

Improving the exchange of data between the two offices and enhancing patent quality globally were two of the main topics in focus at the annual bilateral meeting of the European Patent Office (EPO) and the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO), which took place yesterday in Brussels.

After the successful public launch of the Chinese-English service of the EPO's free online machine translation tool Patent Translate, the delegations of the two offices focused in particular on the migration of the EPO's rebuilt EPOQUE patent search system to the Chinese search engine, and on improving the quality of the input data (bibliographic, abstract and full-text) provided by both partners. Training SIPO examiners in the new Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) scheme was another topic on the agenda, as this was initiatied last year with some very promising results.

Signing their annual workplan for 2013, the heads of the two offices reiterated their great satisfaction: "The past year has seen the outstanding implementation of nearly every activity in the workplan, the best ever in the history of our co-operation. This demonstrates how well our teams are co-operating, and that our partnership results in concrete savings and efficiency gains for both sides," said EPO President Benoît Battistelli. "The close co-operation with the EPO is instrumental for the creation of a strong and efficient patent system in China," said SIPO Commissioner Tian Lipu.

Further information

• EPO and SIPO launch Chinese-English machine translation for patents