EPO and SIPO sign new strategic partnership agreement
November 28, 2017 Category IPR protection, Weekly
China’s State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) have signed a new comprehensive strategic partnership agreement on November 23 with the aim of strengthening cooperation between the two offices, providing better services for global intellectual property users and contributing to improvements in the world’s IP system. The partnership between the two offices evolved from a technical to a strategic one, EPO President Benoit Battistelli said in Beijing.
“SIPO and the EPO are equal partners sharing similar views and objectives for the development of the global IP system,” said Battistelli. These objectives include the highest quality and legal certainty for granted patents, efficient and informed use of the patent system, optimized resources deployment, improved efficiency of patent search and examination tools, and more interaction with users and the industry to provide more professional services, he said. “I’m very impressed by the progress that China has made in recent years and the quality of the granted patents in China,” Battistelli added.“Within a few years, SIPO has become a leading office in the world.”
SIPO, the EPO, the Japan Patent Office, the Korean Intellectual Property Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office – known as the IP5 in the industry – are the world’s five largest patent administrations, representing roughly 85% of global patent applications. More than 2,000 Chinese patent examiners and other related professionals have been trained at the EPO, and the EPO has helped SIPO use tools in patent search and examination. SIPO and the EPO have developed “common positions” in their joint effort to simplify and improve the patent granting procedure. One example is the Global Dossier, a public service that enables users to monitor via a single online source how a family of patent applications is progressing at the IP5 offices. EPO and SIPO have been the first two offices to implement the Global Dossier.
Last year, Chinese companies applied for 7,150 patents at the EPO, accounting for about 5% of the total applications and ranking No 6 among all origins. The number showed the strongest growth of 24.8% among the top 10 leading countries at the EPO, making China “the main driver of growth in applications at the EPO”, according to the office’s 2016 annual report. With 2,390 applications, Chinese IT giant Huawei moved two places ahead to become the second-largest patent applicant at the EPO last year, only after Philips. Also last year, Chinese companies were granted 2,513 patents from the EPO, up 78.7%, the China Daily reports.
The Unitary Patent system will be applied next year, making it possible to get patent protections in 26 European Union members by submitting a single request to the EPO. It will not only simplify patent granting procedures, but also cut the application costs by 70%.
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