KIPO Provides “One Portal Dossier” Information
11 March 2015
Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) commissioner Kim Young-Min has announced that KIPO will launch a service called One Portal Dossier (OPD), which will provide the public with access to patent examination progress information from the world’s five largest IP offices.
The world’s five largest IP offices are the European Patent Office, Japan Patent Office, KIPO, China’s State Intellectual Property Office and the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
System development on the OPD was finished last year, and its official launch will be in March 2015 after its compatibility with the other IP5 offices has been tested. Joint testing in collaboration with other IP5 offices is underway and in its final stage.
The OPD will allow the public to access the IP5 offices’ patent examination data, applications (both filed and cross-filed), and decisions of registration (both filed and crossfiled), as well as to retrieve examination progress information during all phases of the application process, from filing to registration.
Previously, South Korean users were required to access the examination progress database of each IP5 office separately. This resulted in further inconvenience, as Korean translations of the examination progress data were not available from foreign offices. The patent examination progress information services of the IP5 offices are the USPTO-PAIR, EPO-Espacenet, SIPO-CPQuery, JPO-IPDL and KIPOe-filing portal site.
The OPD service is an IP5 cooperative project aimed at enhancing user convenience and making available patent examination progress information from the IP5 offices, which account for 80 percent of all applications globally. In June 2014, KIPO proposed a concrete system development plan and successfully fostered an agreement at the previous IP5 Heads Meeting in Busan.
“Each of the patent offices has the burden of preparing its own software at its own expense,” says Myung-Shin Kim, managing partner at Myung-Shin & Partners in Seoul.
KIPO will begin by providing examination progress information from South Korea, Europe and Japan, and will add China’s information sometime during the second half of 2015. KIPO will be able to provide American examination progress information by 2016, at which time the patent examination progress data from all of the IP5 offices will be available.
But after the USPTO, Kim says there is no plan yet to add more patent offices.
The OPD service requires application numbers only for the retrieval of examination data on a single page, without having to go through such certification procedures as authorized certificates or logging in. This service will also allow users to download examination progress data electronically. However, “it is not so easy for the IP5 offices to harmonize because examination standards and practices of each office are different,” says Kim.
According to a senior official at KIPO, “patent trend analyses and corresponding strategies in Korea are now the key to business survival in a creative economy, and KIPO hopes the OPD service will be useful to the public in keeping abreast of global patent trends and preventing patent disputes.” While patents are taken care of, KIPO does not yet have plans to launch a similar system for other IPRs, says Kim.
