Trilateral Patent Offices Reaffirm Cooperation

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

23 November 2010

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the European Patent Office (EPO), and the Japan Patent Office (JPO) - collectively known as the Trilateral Offices – have met in Virginia for their 28th annual conference.

During their conference, the Trilateral Offices continued to focus on addressing global patent workload challenges, in particular, decreasing pendency and examination backlogs, improving patent quality, and leveraging IT solutions to simplify and speed up processing of patent applications.

In this context, the Trilateral Offices took a number of steps to advance work sharing among the offices. Through work sharing, the Trilateral Offices can leverage work done earlier by another office to improve efficiency and quality of their own search and examination. The conference was preceded by a meeting between the Trilateral Offices and user associations from the three regions.

Of particular significance, the Trilateral Offices agreed to expand their existing cooperation to the IP5, which includes the Trilateral Offices plus the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) and the State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO), by inviting the KIPO and the SIPO to participate in an ongoing pilot, which leverages fast-track examination.

They have launched a pilot programme for the USPTO’s First Look Application Sharing initiative, the aim of which is to provide more USPTO search and examination results faster to the EPO and the JPO when the USPTO was the office where the first application was filed in order to enhance work sharing on commonly filed applications. They will also continue the development of a common citation document to enable examiners and patent information users to see, in a single document, the database of each office on similar applications.

“We are pleased to have made significant advances this week in the area of work sharing among the Trilateral Offices,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO, David Kappos. “We are grateful to our partners at the EPO and the JPO for their commitment to increasing work sharing because it enables us to reduce patent pendency and enhance patent quality for patent applicants around the world.”

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