SIPO Commissioner Tian Lipu recently leads a delegation to Jeju, Republic of Korea to attend the second meeting of the heads of European Patent Office (EPO), Japan Patent Office (JPO), Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), SIPO and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

The meeting discusses the business affairs of how to eliminate unnecessary duplication of work among the offices, enhance patent examination efficiency and reduce the arrears work under the current circumstance of the stable and continuous growth of patent applications. After dialogues and view exchanges, the five patent offices, also known as IP5, have agreed to collaborate in moving forward with a work-sharing initiative, namely, "the elimination of unnecessary duplication of work among the offices, enhancement of patent examination efficiency and quality, and guarantee of the stability of patent rights." The five offices also consult on 10 fundamental projects of work-sharing initiative, covering common documentation database construction, common approach to sharing and documenting search strategies, common approach for a hybrid classification, mutual machine translation and common training policy.

The meeting also issues a summary, noting that the five offices believe that the IP5 meeting provides a sound platform for strengthening cooperation and sharing information, and agree that the cooperation among the five offices should not be hastened and should be conducted in a cooperative, pragmatic, orderly and gradual way.

Related heads from SIPO International Cooperation Department, Patent Affairs Administration Department and Automation Department attend the meeting.