by Jake Meyer

On October 31, 2008, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced a work-sharing initiative between five major intellectual property offices.  The initiative is the result of a meeting on October 27 and October 28, 2008, at Jeju, Korea, between the heads of the five major intellectual property offices to discuss collaboration among the offices.  The Korean Intellectual Property Office, the European Patent Office, the Japan Patent Office, the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office stated that they were creating an initiative with the goal of: “The elimination of unnecessary duplication of work among the offices, enhancement of patent examination efficiency and quality, and guarantee of the stability of patent right.”

The five intellectual property offices established 10 “Foundation Projects,” such as creating a common application format or standardizing the training of patent examiners, to further the initiative’s goal.  The projects are designed to harmonize the examination process and searches for prior art and to standardize the information-sharing process.  Each office will oversee two of the “Foundation Projects.”  The offices agreed that by the end of April 2009 they would exchange detailed proposals on each “Foundation Project.”

In our globalized economy, inventors seek to have their inventions protected in major markets across the world, often filing patent applications in multiple intellectual property offices.  Examiners in each intellectual property office then perform their own searches for prior art and conduct their own examination of the application.  By creating uniformity of the patent examination process for these five major intellectual property offices, work can be shared among the offices, eliminating the waste of resources on duplicative work.  If efficiency is improved, the intellectual property offices may be able to more easily handle the growing number of pending patent applications.

The Common Documentation Database, one of the “Foundation Projects” overseen by the European Patent Office, illustrates how collaboration may improve patent quality among the five intellectual property offices.  The purpose of the Common Documentation Database is to bring together a common set of relevant patent and non-patent literature from around the world to assist patent examiners in their prior art searches.  The different intellectual property offices would be able to add prior art with which they are familiar, thus creating a more complete database of patent and non-patent literature.  Examiners in these five offices will be able to locate prior art in the common database that may have been otherwise missed, allowing these patent applications to be rejected by the examiners, which will improve overall patent quality.

The collaboration among intellectual property offices is important in a global economy.  Collaboration will allow the intellectual property offices to pool resources and to address common challenges, such as patent quality and patent pendency.  By working together, the intellectual property offices strive to ensure that the patent system is promoting innovation globally.