On October 3 of local time, the Ninth Meeting of BRICS Heads of Intellectual Property Office (BRICS HIPO) was held in Geneva, Switzerland. Shen Changyu, Commissioner of State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) attended and presided over the meeting. Also attending the meeting were President of the National Institute of Industrial Property of Brazil Luiz Otávio Pimentel, Director General of Federal Service for Intellectual Property of Russian Federation Mr. Grigory Ivliev, Controller General of the Office of Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks of India Om Prakash Gupta, and Commissioner of the Companies and Intellectual Property Registration Office of South Africa Mr. Rory Voller.

It is the first BRICS HIPO Meeting since the SIPO assumed the post of rotating chairing country. Shen Changyu pointed out in his opening remarks that this year was the fifth year of the cooperation between the BRICS members. The cooperation was developing in a more pragmatic and closer direction. The cooperation mechanism was gradually improved, cooperation projects were growing, and cooperation fields were widened. This year, China as rotating President of the BRICS Cooperation Mechanism, successfully held the ninth meeting of leaders of the BRICS countries and the five countries jointly issued the BRICS Leaders Xiamen Declaration which clearly put forward the idea of strengthening cooperation in the field of intellectual property, a symbol that IP cooperation has become a component of cooperation between the BRICS countries. Shen Changyu looked forward to working with all parties to make intellectual property play a greater role in promoting cooperation among BRICS countries and inject new vitality into the development of the international intellectual property system.

During the meeting, the parties reviewed the progress of their work since the previous meeting, and reviewed the future work of project documents of each IP office. On the meeting it was decided to continue to carry out the BRICS examiners exchange and online training courses, to jointly organize seminars on BRICS small and medium-sized enterprises, and to promote patent classification cooperation and website building for IP cooperation between BRICS countries. Heads of IP offices also exchanged views on international intellectual property matters such as Design Law Treaty, and the PCT fee reduction for universities and public research institutions in developing countries. It was also agreed upon that all offices would fully support China to hold the tenth BRICS HIPO and related activities.

Before the meeting, the fourth session of the BRICS Intellectual Property Coordination Group was held to discuss several important matters. (Translated from SIPO Website Chinese Version)