The heads of the five advanced patent offices gathered in Seoul. The five advanced patent offices (IP5) represent about 85% of global patent applications and are known as the 'G5' in the intellectual property field. Established in 2007, the group consists of South Korea, the United States, China, Europe, and Japan. The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) led discussions on new technologies such as artificial intelligence at the meeting of the IP5 heads.
On the 20th, the Patent Office announced that it held the ‘IP5 Heads Meeting’ at the Four Seasons Hotel Seoul. This meeting was hosted by the Korean Intellectual Property Office for the first time in five years since the 2019 Incheon Songdo meeting.
The patent office heads attending the meeting discussed ▲ ways to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the field of intellectual property ▲ building a user-friendly global intellectual property system including international patent transfers ▲ and response measures to the development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence.
Through the meeting, IP5 also adopted the ‘IP5 Joint Declaration’ outlining the mid- to long-term implementation directions for achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
Recently, IP5 has focused on discussing possible cooperation measures in the intellectual property field to realize the Sustainable Development Goals. A representative example is the inclusion of ‘realizing the Sustainable Development Goals’ in the IP5 cooperation vision, which was specified at the IP5 heads meeting held last year in Hawaii, USA, and has become one of IP5’s important cooperation goals.
In particular, at the Seoul meeting, led by the Korean Intellectual Property Office and jointly with the Japan Patent Office, an agreement was reached to establish the ‘Guideline for Building a Sustainable Future’ for IP5 cooperation to realize the Sustainable Development Goals. This is evaluated as laying the foundation for Korea to lead IP5 cooperation for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in the future.
The IP5 heads also exchanged opinions on building a user-friendly system at the meeting. At this occasion, the Korean Intellectual Property Office announced the progress of the ‘global patent transfer’ system, where a patent holder submits a patent transfer application once, and the transfer effect of the patent is collectively recognized in all IP5 countries.
After the announcement, the IP5 heads agreed to promptly complete the institutional review necessary to implement the ‘global patent transfer’ system.
In particular, at the meeting, the China National Intellectual Property Administration agreed to participate in a joint project with the patent offices of South Korea, the United States, and Japan to provide patent examination results under the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) within three months to applicants. This is expected to enable rapid examination of intellectual property filed locally in China and increase applicants’ ability to predict the timing of receiving examination results.
The PPH is an ‘international patent examination cooperation program’ that supports rapid examination by other countries’ patent offices once patentability is recognized by one patent office.
The Korean Intellectual Property Office also achieved approval at the meeting for the research results on the ‘Inventorship of AI generated inventions,’ which it has led. These research results reflect related policy trends of IP5, including the ‘Guidelines on Inventorship of AI-generated inventions’ recently announced by the United States Patent and Trademark Office following the White House executive order in October 2023.
Additionally, the IP5 heads shared the progress of the ‘New Emerging Technologies and Artificial Intelligence (NET·AI) Roadmap,’ approved at the 14th Heads Meeting in 2021 led by the Korean Intellectual Property Office, and discussed future plans.
Kim Si-hyung, Acting Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office, said, “The IP5 Heads Meeting hosted by Korea was held in the global innovation city of Seoul for the first time in five years since the 2019 Songdo meeting. The Patent Office will do its best to solidify Korea’s position as a global hub country leading the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals and the development of international intellectual property systems through this meeting.”
© The Asia Business Daily(www.asiae.co.kr). All rights reserved.
