Patent Geography - Global Applications, Regional Protection September 4, 2017 EPIP 12 th Annual Conference Yoshiaki Kodachi Japan Patent Office
Outline of Japan Patent Office Speed 9.7 month (FY 2015) First Action pendency 15.0 month (FY 2015) Total Pendency 2.5 month (FY 2016) First Action Pendency Under Accelerated Examination System Quality More than 94 % (FY2016) Users are satisfied or have no complaint about JPO s examinations Around 70 % Examiners with more than 10 years of experience Around 500 Examiners with R&D experience 99.1% (YEAR 2016) International Search Report in time for publication Around 360 (FY2016) Exchange of views with industries 1
Global Cooperation among JPO and Partner Offices JPO participating in various cooperative frameworks Trilateral (EPO, JPO, USPTO), Asian Trilateral (JPO, KIPO, SIPO), IP5, Serve as a Bridge among Europe, U.S., and Asia IP5 Trilateral TRIPO 2
For Global Patenting: Patent Harmonization Harmonization of Patent Systems At the Group B+ Meetings attended by developed countries, discussions have been advanced on the following four key issues for patent system harmonization: (1) Grace period (2) 18-month publication system (3) Conflicting applications (4) Prior user rights Held a symposium for users in June 2017. Harmonization of Operational Practices of the Patent System At the IP5 PHEP, discussions have been advanced on the following three issues: (1) Unity of inventions (2) Disclosure obligation of prior arts by applicants Harmonize operating practices in the international phase under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system Agreed to reduce workload by making effective use of IT tools (3) Description requirements in specifications Reflect user opinions into comparative studies of case examples 3
For Global Patenting: Work-sharing Program Responding to globalization of economy and significant increase in the number of patent application Avoiding duplicated works among IP offices and improving efficiency & quality Expanding the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) - One of the most successful work-sharing programs in the world - Advocated by the JPO, commenced with the USPTO in 2006 - Expanding to 47 IP Offices, including IP5 and Global PPH member offices Office of Earlier Examination Patent Application Search & Examination Determination to be patentable Office of Later Examination Patent Application PPH request Accelerated Examination 4
For Global Patenting: Work-sharing Program Implementing PPH with 39 IP offices 47,000 PPH requests based on JPO s search and examination results (the largest number in the world) The percentage of total GDP of PPH members in the global GDP The number of PPH requests to other IP Offices 50000 47000 40000 38000 82% 30000 20000 14000 11000 10000 0 4000 Japan USA European Korea China Patent Office 5
For Global Patenting: Work-sharing Tools Developing IT tools to share dossier information as a work-sharing platform Leading the project of the One Portal Dossier (OPD), an indispensable worksharing tool among all IP5 Offices Implemented technical linkage between OPD and WIPO-CASE towards establishing Global Work-sharing Network One Portal Dossier (OPD) JPO WIPO-CASE EPO KIPO USPTO SIPO Linkage In addition to IP5 Offices; 24 countries/organizations* participate as of September 2017. AU, CA, GB, IL and WIPO (PCT) provide their dossier information for examiner use. AU, CA, WIPO (PCT) also provide their dossier information for public use. Public users J-PlatPat allows public users to access dossier information of IP5 and other WIPO-CASE member offices Participating offices except by IP5 Offices: AU, AZ, BN, KH, CA, CL, CR, EG, GB, IN, ID, IL, LA, MY, MN, NZ, PG, PH, PT, SG, TH, VN, EAPO, WIPO
For Global Patenting: Work-sharing Tools Comparable to examination results among several offices at a glance Directly approachable to document contents Document in Original language Document in Machine-translated English 一般ユーザー 7
For Global Patenting: Responding to Emerging Technologies Established ZIT as IoT-related cross-cutting classification in Nov. 2016 Improve the efficiency of prior art searches and promote R&D activities Subdivided by the aspect of use in Apr. 2017 Leading discussions to establish IPC based on ZIT Establishment of ZIT Subdividing ZIT by use Supplying electricity, gas or water Construction Finance Agriculture/ fishing/mining Logistics Health care ZIT Making it possible to retrieve all the various technologies on IoT Home and building ; home electric appliance Manufacturing Communication Services Enabling retrieval of IoT technologies in respective uses Transportation Amusement ; sports ; games 8
For Global Patenting: Responding to Emerging Technologies Added examples of examinations on IoT technologies to the Examination Handbook Sep. 2016: 12 examples on utilization of data (4) Mar. 2017: 11 examples on acquisition (1), management (2), and analysis and learning (3) of data Improve applicants predictability in terms of acquiring rights and promote innovations IoT technologies by types of data Neural network Deep learning Trained model (4) Utilization of data 12 cases (3)Analysis/ Learning 11 cases Examples: Published 12 examples, such as method of allocating unmanned autonomous vehicles, in September 2016 Trained model to analyze reputation information on accommodations (published in March 2017) Quality management program of manufacturing lines (published in March 2017) Data management Data structure (2) Management Tree-structured area management data (published in March 2017) Data structure of encrypted package files (published in March 2017) Sensing data (1) Acquisition Sugar-content data of apples (published in March 2017) 9
For Global Patenting: Responding to Emerging Technologies Set up an IoT Examination Team consisting of examiners knowledgeable in IoT inventions Achieve higher-quality examinations based on making effective use of the IoT specialists knowledge and expertise Accumulate and share knowledge and expertise on IoT technologies, as well as study case examples of how JPO s examiners determine the patentability of inventions on IoT technologies Iot Examination Team IoT specialists Consult with each other, making use of the knowledge and expertise on IoT technologies Examiners in a variety of technical fields 10
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