Patent Offices Agree To Boost Cooperation

Efforts to further harmonize patent systems around the globe are moving forward, according to officials from the U.S., European, and Japanese patent offices. At their annual conference near Paris last week, representatives of the so-called Trilateral Patent Offices announced agreement on steps to increase cooperation in patent-related procedures and improve the exchange of information among the three regions. The heads of the European Patent Office, the Japan Patent Office, and the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office agreed to launch a new tool that they say will make it easier to access results from patent searches carried out by multiple offices for the same invention. The tool, the Common Citation Document, enables patent examiners as well as innovators to search for and view, in a single screen, the prior art cited by the patent offices for a patent application.