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Wednesday, September 12, 2007

WIPO: Attempts to Strengthen the Role Of PCT ISR in National Phases.

Ms Liza Porteus

writes for

Intellectual Property Watch:

"[...] NEW YORK - A supplementary international patent search will be introduced and likely approved during the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) General Assembly meeting later this month, WIPO Deputy Director Francis Gurry told Intellectual Property Watch on Tuesday.

Gurry also raised an idea discussed this week between the European Patent Office, Japan Patent Office and US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that he described as a proposal to 'look at using, to a greater extent, the international search report in the national phase.' [...]"

Furthermore, according to Mr Gurry we are witnessing a 500-year shift because, for the last 500 years, most of the world's technology has been produced in European languages but now, as Mr Gurry argues, we are seeing roughly a quarter of it being produced in Japanese, Chinese and Korean. Because of the increasing linguistic diversity, it is increasingly difficult for a single office to cover all languages, Gurry added, suggesting a supplemental international search which would enable an applicant to request, in addition to the principal search, a supplementary search from another international authority, e.g. a search conducted by the Chinese patent office.

Times are changing, indeed.

Other relevant issued discussed in New York include:

SHARE, which stands for Strategic Handling of Applications for Rapid Examination. According to Ms Porteus' report, it is intended to give greater credit or weight to international search reports conducted to alleviate some of the workload of national patent offices.
Some proposals are being considered to keep up with the demand for new patents and to streamline the process by which they are approved or denied. Further ideas include outsourcing and patent law harmonisation.

With regard to the SHARE project, see also

Remarks of Jon Dudas "Global Trends in IP Protection: A U.S. Perspective" - Global Forum on Intellectual Property Protection and Innovation, Beijing , China, March 27, 2007. Under this approach, a patent office would give priority to examining applications for which it was the office of first filing. The office would wait to examine applications for which it is the office of second filing - until search-and-examination results are available from the other office. This approach would work well with the

Patent Prosecution Highway framework.

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