USPTO extends patent agreements with JPO and KIPO

The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has signed patent search agreements with both the Japan Patent Office (JPO) and the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO).

The expanded pilot builds on the successful first phase that was recently completed in the summer of 2017, according to a press release from the USPTO, published yesterday, November 6.

Memorandums of cooperation (MOCs) were signed at bilateral meetings held on the margins of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) General Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.

Joseph Matal, director of the USPTO, signed the MOC with KIPO on October 1 and with the JPO the next day.

The programme is “designed to provide the examiners with the best prior art by combining the search expertise of examiners at the USPTO and JPO or KIPO before issuing an office action in the patent application”.

All of the offices have contributed relevant prior art to the prosecution history in the applications completed so far in the initial programme.

The result of the contributions has been a “significant reduction in prosecution time and a substantially reduced need for requests for continued examination to complete prosecution (with more than a 90% allowance rate)”.

Since November 1, applicants wishing to take advantage of the benefits of the programme will need to have unexamined corresponding counterpart applications in the USPTO and in either or both KIPO and the JPO.

Matal said: “Collaboration with our partner offices has demonstrated that coordinating our examination efforts provides significant benefits to all parties—offices and applicants alike. I look forward to seeing this programme expand and become a strategy for applicants who file multinationally.”

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