Report on FY2020 Annual User Satisfaction Survey on Patent Examination Quality

March 2021
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.

The FY2020 survey was conducted online and the response rate was nearly 90%. This year's survey showed that 97.3% of the respondents evaluated the level of satisfaction with the overall quality of patent examination on national applications as neutral or higher. 97.2% of the respondents evaluated the level of satisfaction with the overall quality of the international search and international preliminary examination on PCT applications as neutral or higher.

In response to the results of the FY2020 survey, the JPO will continue to advance efforts placing weight on “consistency of judgments among examiners” and “application of the Article 29 (2): inventive step.”

We will thus commit to making continuous efforts to maintain and improve examination quality.

• Report on FY2020 Annual User Satisfaction Survey on Patent Examination Quality (PDF: 1,045KB)

[Last updated 19 March 2021]

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