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Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) provides filing mechanism for global protection of innovative products and services.
IP5 is a forum consisting of five world’s largest intellectual property offices. This IP5 forum was set up to ameliorate the examination process of the patent application by addressing the backlog in the application and thus making the process efficient worldwide.
The members that together constitute IP5 include the European Patent Office (EPU), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the National Intellectual Property Administration of the People’s Republic of China (CNIPA) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). These members meet annually to review progress and decide strategies.
The Global Dossier or IP5 One Portal Dossier service was launched in July 2013, is a single portal to access the patent applications, patent cross filings of all the five world’s largest intellectual property offices, by availing file wrapper. This portal is a secure system for managing common patent applications filed in multiple patent offices. Further, it is a platform for the exchange of dossier information between the IP5 Offices.
In 2014 the OPD technology was linked to WIPO CASE, which is a system to share patent search reports and examination documentation related to patent applications. This WIPO-OPD linkage became a global work-sharing platform wherein dossier information related to the patent application are shared amongst the IP5 offices that enhanced user experience. This content is available for patent applications from Australia, Canada, Israel, the UK, and WIPO IB (PCT).
The OPD technology is deployed to view all the IP5 file wrappers documents from any one of the IP5 Office. In June 2014, the EPO deployed the European Global Dossier availing the OPD technology to display CNIPA file wrapper data.
Further, another aspect of OPD technology is that the document can be viewed either in the native/original language or in the English language via machine translation services. Moreover, this platform enables the user to view around 2.5 million new patent application every year at the IP5 offices.
File wrapper or dossier content is a single location wherein file histories of all the patent applications in the family can be accessed. This is also called a ‘public file’ that contains documents related to search reports, office action and correspondence between the applicant and the patent office, providing updated information about the progress of the patent application through the examination process.
The scope of the IP5 Global Dossier has been further extended via the PATENTOSCOPE in the documents tab, to include the file wrappers of the patent offices of European, Japanese and Canadian national/regional collections, and others are gradually being included in the individual IP5 Offices’ public Global Dossier services.
IP5 One Portal Dossier allows user to access real-time/up-to-date information regarding the patent family application from filing to the grant in a single location. Therefore, increasing the efficiency of patent application processes and improving global work sharing.
Another feature of one portal dossier is tracking an application’s progress and anticipating the application’s outcome, thus improving patent quality, resulting in higher patent value.
Additionally, the OPD technology has a feature of machine translations of foreign IP5 patent documents. The patent applications can be viewed in the English language by availing this feature of machine translation of OPD technology, thus improving ease of filing internationally and facilitating work sharing.
Furthermore, this OPD technology helps monitor the progress of competitor’s application, leading to improved predictability of patent application.
The ultimate goal of one portal dossier is to simplify the process of filing multiple subsequent patent application across the IP5 offices, thus, providing global work sharing in a single location. This OPD technology facilitates one portal management of preplanned cross filings of patent applications and eliminates filing of duplicate documents in multiple offices.
The importance of OPD is allowing the user to access data containing all patent applications filed at the IP5 offices, such as patent examination, decisions of registration of applications, classification, patent family for a specific application, citation data for these applications. The user can further identify applications that contain office actions, save or review those applications and download the documents of an application.
This benefits the applicants by providing them access to patent applications along with citations, search reports, examination reports and the like. This further helps to remove duplication of patent filings across IP5 offices, thus reducing the time and costs of the applicants.
This acts as a tool to enhance the due diligence process by investors, licensees and acquirers and provides an efficient way to submit Third Party Observations.
This benefits the Examiers to access search and examination reports, allowing work sharing with examiners in other offices leading to faster conclusion of the initial patent examination process and provides global compatibility of systems.
One Portal Dossier provides access to search reports and examination reports across participating offices, leading to more efficient examination and predictable outcomes and saving time and cost to applicants/users. Therefore, improving quality of patents issued by the participating offices. This not only benefits the end-user but also streamlines the office procedure between the IP5 offices.
Recently, the meeting of the Global Desire Task Force was held on 11 March 2021, wherein the discussions were regarding the feedback of IP5 Global Dossier services and prioritizing the five Global Dossier tasks that include- inter-office document sharing to alleviate applicant’s burden, establishing alerting services allowing users to set automatic alerts when there is a change in patent application status, downloading XML application content and the possibility of making OPD-API services to IP5 industry, applicant name standardization by implementing an automated system that assigns a single unique name to entities with applications pending in multiple offices, tracking the legal status of validity of patents & access to maintenance fees and utilizing NET/AI technologies.
Therefore, the Global Dossier acts as a tool that provides applicants, patentees, examiners and others to efficiently search, review and manage patent information and providing global harmonization between IP5 offices.
Our team of advanced patent attorneys assists clients with patent searches, drafting patent applications, and patent (intellectual property) agreements, including licensing and non-disclosure agreements. Advocate Rahul Dev is a Patent Attorney & International Business Lawyer practicing Technology, Intellectual Property & Corporate Laws. He is reachable at rd (at) patentbusinesslawyer (dot) com & @rdpatentlawyer on Twitter.
Quoted in and contributed to 50+ national & international publications (Bloomberg, FirstPost, SwissInfo, Outlook Money, Yahoo News, Times of India, Economic Times, Business Standard, Quartz, Global Legal Post, International Bar Association, LawAsia, BioSpectrum Asia, Digital News Asia, e27, Leaders Speak, Entrepreneur India, VCCircle, AutoTech).
Regularly invited to speak at international & national platforms (conferences, TV channels, seminars, corporate trainings, government workshops) on technology, patents, business strategy, legal developments, leadership & management.
Working closely with patent attorneys along with international law firms with significant experience with lawyers in Asia Pacific providing services to clients in US and Europe. Flagship services include international patent and trademark filings, patent services in India and global patent consulting services.
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