USPTO and JPO go green with PCT deal

The Japan Patent Office (JPO) has agreed to assist the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) with handling Patent Cooperation Treaty applications directed towards green technology.

According to a deal signed yesterday, July 1, the JPO will act as an international searching authority and international preliminary examining authority for green applications filed with the USPTO as the receiving office.

The agreement will end on June 30, 2018, but the offices have the option of extending it.

Michelle Lee, director of the USPTO, said the collaboration benefits applicants by “providing an additional option for examination of their international applications directed to green technology”.

The deal is subject to several caveats, however, including that applications must be submitted in English and that claims must be “directed to the field of green technology as defined by certain international patent classification classes”.

Other potential deal-breakers would be if the JPO received more than 5,000 applications from July 1 to June 30, 2018, more than 300 applications per quarter during year one, and more than 475 applications per quarter during the second and third years.

The JPO must also be chosen as a competent authority by the applicants, according to the deal.

The agreement comes just over a month after the agencies, along with the Korean Intellectual Property Office, signed an agreement to better improve patent searches. Signed on May 21, it allows the three organisations to work on the Collaboration Search Pilot programme, which is intended to help offices and patent applicants search for prior art.

In an  interview with WIPR earlier in May, JPO commissioner Hitoshi Ito said that his aims in the coming years are to “enhance the quality while maintaining accelerated speed of examination, and promoting globalisation”.