International Activities
The 15th Trilateral Users Meeting
On May 17, 2011, the 15th Trilateral Users Meeting was held in Munich, Germany, with representatives from AIPLA, IPO, BE(BusinessEurope), and JIPA. This meeting has been held twice a year since 2003, based on JIPA''s proposal to set up a forum to discuss common problems and promote harmonization.In this meeting, the participants continued to focus on issues of Harmonization in Search and Examination. In the discussion, Mr. Shoubayashi, who is a Chairperson of the 1st Patent Committee of JIPA, made a presentation on the results of the study on the difference in the description requirements between Japan, US and EPO by the continuation from the last meeting. Trilateral Users will push forward examination in working group based on a demand of JIPA in future for Harmonization of the description requirements.
In addition, Mr. Ota, who is a Chairperson of International second Committee of JIPA, made a presentation on the result of the investigation and the analysis about the International Search Report of PCT. The participants shared recognition of the importance of the survey of the International Search Report of PCT, and decided to be able to make a proposal to the Trilateral Offices through the examination in future.
The participants also discussed other issues, including the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) and the response to meetings of the IP5. The Trilateral Users, through the exchange of opinions among them, decided to make a proposal on these agendas for the Trilateral Offices as their common requests.
On May 18, 2011, the next day, Trilateral Offices and Users Working Level Meeting was held at EPO. At the meeting, it was discussed about the actions by the Applicnt, Patent Office and others for the improvement of Patent Quality. In particular, EPO showed aggressive intention that Offices want to promote Patent Quality improvement in cooperation with Applicant, by hearing the opinion from Applicant. In addition, a constructive and positive discussion was performed about "Common Citation Document", which standardized the describing method of cited references in the Trilateral Offices, and the others.
The next meeting will be held in November, in Haag, Holland.
