The leaders of the world’s five biggest patent offices will meet in Korea at the end of this month to discuss patent quality and how to make systems more efficient

John Doll, USPTO Commissioner of Patents, told a session at the 11th FICPI World Congress today that there are 10 foundation projects to be discussed at the meeting, which will feature the leaders of the USPTO, JPO, EPO, KIPO and SIPO.

Two of the biggest items on the agenda to improve search quality are a common classification system and shared databases of patent documents, he said.

Other important topics to be discussed are harmonisation of the way examiners search and record prior art. “Search recordation is extremely important,” said Doll.

Common application formats are also set to be discussed, with KIPO willing to move towards the standards used in the Trilateral offices, and SIPO “not far behind”.

Also on the agenda are training, electronic file access and machine translations.

Doll said that Chinese officials have also proposed discussing having common examination and quality standards and data exchange.

Speaking at the same session, Wim Van der Eijk, principal director of international legal affairs at the EPO, said the Office is “wiling to continue testing various schemes for work-sharing” and stressed the importance of the PCT system.

He said the EPO “was lagging a bit behind’ other offices in the development of patent prosecution highways, but had last week launched one with the USPTO, and would start one with the JPO early next year.

Doll described such highways, by which an application that has received a positive response in one office can be fast-tracked in a second office, as “a great opportunity to share the work of another office”. But he added: “It’s under-utilised.”

To promote their use, the USPTO is launching a so-called Share programme, in which the Office will take cases and prioritise them, sharing information with the office of second filing. These cases will cover every classification, said Doll.