Asia IP

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) has recently hosted a meeting in Busan, Korea of the heads of the five major IP offices, including the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). 

This year marked the seventh occasion of the IP5 Heads Meeting. Heads of the five offices, KIPO Commissioner Youngmin Kim, EPO President Benoît Battistelli, JPO Commissioner Hideo Hato, SIPO Commissioner Shen Changyu, and Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce and Deputy Director of the USPTO Michelle Lee, to discuss a wide-ranging agenda on how to further increase the efficiency and quality of the patent granting process and enhance work-sharing among the five offices.

Delivering on their commitments, the IP5 heads agreed to: 
- Increase the quality of the patent documentation held by the offices by publishing the complete collection of each office; 
- Promote public access to “file wrapper” information (Global Dossier) at the IP5 level: the EPO’s Global Dossier service has been launched and public access to file wrapper information through each of the five IP office’s systems will be completed in phases over the next two years; 
- Start work on patent harmonization focusing on the citation of prior art, written description/sufficiency of disclosure and unity of invention, the latter topic being first addressed by a group of experts, not precluding launch of the other two topics, in Autumn 2014 in China. 
- Launch the update of the IP5 website (www.fiveipoffices.org) to inform the public more efficiently of the outcomes of IP5 cooperation and activities together with IP5 statistics and materials. 
- Collaborate on the development of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system; 

Prior to the meeting, the IP5 heads met representatives from six industry groups of the IP5 regions to hear views and opinions on IP5 agenda topics, particularly the Global Dossier and patent information exchange, work-sharing and quality, development of the PCT and the PPH system, patent harmonization and the next steps of IP5 cooperation.

The IP5 Offices reaffirmed the importance of having users directly involved in the improvement of the global patent system. 

KIPO Commissioner Kim emphasized that this year’s meeting presented a good opportunity for the five offices to move forward with making their services and policies more user-friendly and efficient. The five Offices agreed to continue their endeavours in providing sustainable and reliable IP services to users.