Report on FY2019 Annual User Satisfaction Survey on Patent Examination Quality

May 2020
Quality Management Office
Administrative Affairs Division

To achieve the utmost quality in the world in terms of patent examination, it is essential that continuous efforts be made for sustaining and enhancing the quality of patent examination, based on an accurate understanding of the needs and expectations of users such as applicants and third parties. Therefore, we have conducted a user satisfaction survey on patent examination annually since the first Survey in FY2012 was conducted.

As in the last seven surveys, this survey also achieved a high response rate of around 90% from users. This year's survey showed that 93.7% of the respondents evaluated the level of satisfaction with the overall quality of patent examination of national applications as neutral or higher. 97.4% of the respondents evaluated the level of satisfaction with the overall quality of the international search and international preliminary examination of PCT applications as neutral or higher.

The level of satisfaction with consistency of judgements among examiners was neutral or higher for 85.7% of the respondents as we continued initiatives for the item, such as enhancing consultations and approvals, on a priority basis. The survey showed that the average level of satisfaction with the item also increased.

Based on this fiscal year's survey results, the Quality Management Office concluded that we should focus on application of Article 29 (2) regarding inventive step in addition to consistency of judgements among examiners. We will strive to improve consistency of judgements among examiners and to share expertise on examination, enhancing consultations among examiners and approval processes by managerial officers for examination results.

We will thus commit to making continuous efforts to maintain and improve examination quality based on invaluable information obtained from user surveys.

• Report on FY2019 Annual User Satisfaction Survey on Patent Examination Quality (PDF: 1,287MB)

[Last updated 8 May 2020]

Contact

Quality Management Office Administrative Affairs Division Patent and Design Examination Department Japan Patent Office TEL：+81-3-3581-1101 (ex. 3121) E-mail:PA2A30@jpo.go.jp