On November 23, the Eleventh Conference of Heads of Offices between the State Intellectual Property Office of China and the European Patent Office was held in Zhengzhou. State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) Commissioner Shen Changyu and European Patent Office (EPO) President Benoit Battistelli addressed the conference.

Shen Changyu mentioned that when State Councilor Wang Yong met with Benoit Battistelli on November 21, he spoke highly of the intellectual property (IP) cooperation between the two offices and expressed sincere hope for future cooperation. It fully demonstrated that China has attached great importance to IP cooperation with EU, which will vigorously promote further development of IP cooperation between SIPO and EPO. At the meeting, Shen Changyu briefed the guests on the progress of cooperation projects between the two offices and China's achievements in developing IP policies and regulations in recent years, implementing national IP strategies, deepening IP reform, and strengthening the protection and application of intellectual property rights. Shen Changyu said the in-depth cooperation between the two offices had made a lot of achievements and realized some common goals, including maintaining communication on and coordinating IP issues under global and multilateral frameworks, using common databases and search systems, and jointly providing assistance and solutions to the IP offices of relevant countries. The cooperation has achieved remarkable results and laid a solid foundation for deepening the cooperation between the two offices. At the new starting point for cooperation, the two sides agreed to upgrade their relationship between the two offices to a comprehensive strategic partnership, which will provide even more powerful support for the development of China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership. SIPO is ready to work with EPO to further explore new opportunities for cooperation between the two offices so as to promote evolution and progress of the global patent system, provide better services to IP users and the public as a whole and jointly promote the economic prosperity of China and EU.

Benoit Battistelli spoke highly of the remarkable achievements made by China in IP development in recent years and appreciated the firm confidence and unrelenting efforts given by SIPO in enhancing the strategic cooperation between the two offices. He introduced EPO's efforts in shortening patent examination cycle and improving the quality of patent examination among other areas. He said that the fruitful cooperation between the two offices in recent years has been greatly beneficial to the business and economic development of both sides. Both EU and China are faced with economic opportunities brought by globalization. Enterprises from both sides have actively participated in the global market competition and will be faced with common challenge of the increasingly growing patent applications. He hoped the two sides would take the establishment of the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two offices as a new starting point to comprehensively strengthen cooperation and exchanges in various fields, learn from each other's successful experiences and achieve more and better cooperation results in the new era.

At the meeting, the two sides signed the Agreement on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China and the European Patent Office and the Work Plan for 2018 Bilateral Cooperation between the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China and the European Patent Office. They also jointly reviewed and summarized the two parties' recent development in cooperation, especially cooperation in last year, and had wide and in-depth exchanges and reached consensus on issues including the development of all-round strategic partnership in the future, patent data exchange, CPC classification, examination capacity building, examination quality improving, patent re-examination, patent information and cooperation between the IP five offices. Accompanied by Shen Changyu, Benoit Battistelli and his delegation also visited the Henan Center of Patent Examination under SIPO and had exchanges with the examiners there.

SIPO Deputy Commissioner Zhang Maoyu and EPO Vice President Raimund Lutz as well as related officials attended the meetings and activities.  (Translated from SIPO Website Chinese Version)