| I Outline
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| 1. |
At the 20th Trilateral Conference in Vienna, Austria, on 4-8 November 2002, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the Japan Patent Office had a discussion on a near-term bilateral project agreed upon this June. This project concerns mutual exploitation of search results. The elements of the project were discussed and determined as follows.
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Essential features of the project
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| 1)
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Both Offices initiate phase I of the experimental near-term bilateral project in January 2003 and provide a mid-term review of the results of this first phase by May 2003.
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| 2)
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Both Offices identify a list of applications (about 50 applications) in all fields of technology that have been filed via the Paris route for which search results are to be exchanged.
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| 3)
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The Office of first filing will provide the following on paper for each such exchanged application:
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a) |
Office actions (notice of the reasons for refusal provided by JPO are to be translated into English) |
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b) |
Any non-patent literature prior art with pertinent sections highlighted |
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c) |
The field of search (including FI and F-terms searched or US classifications and corresponding IPC) and search strategy employed for on-line searches of non-patent literature |
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d) |
A copy of claims as amended which were examined in the office action |
| 4) |
Both Offices will evaluate the degree that each exchanged office action was relied upon by the Office of second filing to the maximum extent practicable at the mid-term review in May 2003. Phase II of the near term project will commence after the mid-term review with the results to be evaluated by the end of 2003. The terms and conditions of phase II will be agreed upon after the mid-term review. |
| 5) |
Both Offices will exchange any further office actions for follow-up evaluation for applications where search results have been exchanged. |
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| 2. |
In addition to the bilateral project between the USPTO and the JPO, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the JPO committed to start bilateral discussions to define aspects of their search exchange program. |
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| II Schedule |
| May 2003 |
Mid-term review |
| May 2003 |
Agreement on the terms and conditions of phase II
Commencement of phase II
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| End of 2003 |
Evaluation of results achieved from the project |
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| III Objective of measures |
| 1. |
Establish a global cooperation scheme in patent examination dealing with the global increase in the number of patent applications |
| 2. |
Facilitation of global patent acquisition for applications filed in Japan |
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The necessity of cooperation among patent Offices is indicated in the Intellectual Property Policy Outline. |
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| Extract from the Intellectual Property Policy Outline |
(5) Promotion of cooperation and international harmonization of the intellectual property system
1) Reinforcement of measures for establishing a global patent system
i) In order to obtain a patent right internationally under the present situation in which individual countries have their own patent systems, it is necessary to file the same patent application separately in each country. This imposes a significant burden on the applicant in terms of time and money. Furthermore, since the workload of each patent Office increases by examining the same application separately, it takes longer for the applicant to obtain the right. In order to enable applicants to quickly obtain patent rights and reduce the workload of patent Offices, the GOJ will promote cooperation among patent Offices for mutual use of prior art search and examination results. More specifically, by the end of 2002 the GOJ will launch a project to study mutual use of prior art search and examination results between the JPO and the USPTO, and will decide a post 2004 plan in this regard by the end of 2003 at the latest.
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| (The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry)
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