- Opening the ‘6th Trilateral Policy Dialogue Meeting among 3 offices and the ‘12th Commissioners’ Meeting between KIPO and SIPO.’ -


(KIPO : the Korean Intellectual Property Office, JPO : the Japan Patent Office,

SIPO : the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China )

On Monday, December 4th, 2006, Commissioner Sang-Woo Jun of KIPO participated in the ‘6th Trilateral Policy Dialogue Meeting among 3 offices held at Beijing, China. In the meeting, the three commissioners agreed on ‘reducing work burden by mutually sharing the results of examination,’ which is the midterm goal of the roadmap for patent cooperation among the three offices.


At the ‘5th Trilateral Policy Dialogue Meeting’ in 2005, KIPO proposed a long-term vision of ‘constructing a local patent office in Northeast Asia’ by ‘establishing a patent community in Northeast Asia.’ The aim of this proposal is to establish a ground for new discussion on the takeoff of patent cooperation among the three offices.


Hearing this proposal, SIPO and JPO voiced their opinion stating that a ‘de-centralized’ approach, where the current operation of patent office in each country remains while the examination results are shared among countries, might be preferred rather than the ‘centralized’ approach of establishing a single local patent office. Taking the opinion of SIPO and JPO into consideration, KIPO proposed a new roadmap.


The new roadmap proposed by KIPO mentions establishing mutual trust on examination results as well as promoting harmony of the system in the short term, and mutually recognizing the examination results in long term.


To recognize examination results among the three countries, KIPO emphasized the necessity of activating human exchange among the patent offices of the countries, as well as establishing a foundation for the mutual utilization of examination results by constructing an information system. KIPO also emphasized that once this foundation is established, a patent prosecution highway among the three offices must be enforced by rearranging laws related to preferential examinations and by constructing an online dossier-access system.

If the promotion of the cooperative roadmap among the three offices can simplify the procedure of patent application, applicants of the three countries will be able to save cost and effort. Also, the examination work itself will be greatly reduced, since the three patent offices will not have to examine an identical international patent repetitively.


SIPO emphasized the mutual utilization of search and examination results to reduce the examination period as well as to improve the examination quality. JPO proposed goals such as sharing examination results to overcome the problem of repetitive examination and providing various services that can increase convenience for applicants.


The three offices agreed to continue their discussions on the roadmap for patent cooperation. In this meeting, they agreed on ‘reducing work burden by mutually sharing the results of examination,’ the midterm goal of such roadmap.


The three offices evaluated the accomplishments of the ‘Joint Experts Group for Automation among three patent offices,’ and agreed to continue this type of cooperation in the future. They also agreed on holding a joint symposium to exchange patent statistics data and support patent management of medium/small enterprises.


In the afternoon, Commissioner Sang-Woo Jun participated in the ‘12th Commissioners’ Meeting between KIPO and SIPO’ In this meeting, issues such as newly establishing of Patent Examination Experts Meeting Mechanism, exchanging of intellectual property liaison officers, sharing experience in information on patent statistics were discussed.