Worldwide Intellectual Property Service

The five largest Intellectual Property (IP) offices in the world – the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (SIPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) – co-operate under the so-called “IP5”. The IP5 offices handle about 80 % of all patent filings in the world.

At the beginning of June, they met in Busan, Korea, to discuss how to further increase the efficiency and quality of the patent granting process and enhance work-sharing among the five offices. They agreed to:

Increase the quality of the patent documentation by publishing the complete collection of each office (IP5 Authority File publication);
Promote public access to “file wrapper” information (Global Dossier) at the IP5 level;
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 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 which makes it possible to seek patent protection for an invention simultaneously in a large number of countries by filing an “international” patent application.

The next IP5 Heads Meeting will be hosted by SIPO in China in 2015.