International Activities

The Trilateral Patent Offices and Users Meeting in Trieste, Italy

The Trilateral Patent Offices and Users Meeting between the patent offices (JPO, USPTO, and EPO) and users was held in Trieste, Italy on April 9, 2014. Presidents and Vice presidents attended from the trilateral offices, and JIPA, AIPLA & IPO, Business Europe attended as trilateral users. Mr. Takenaka, leader of the International Policy PJ, Ms. Miyashita, assistant-leader of the International Policy PJ, Mr. Ohashi, chairman of the International Affairs Committee, Mr. Otsuka, vice chairman of the Patent Committee, and some other members participated in the meeting from JIPA.

In the meeting, the Trilateral Patent Offices first introduced recent activities of each office and then reported how the Tegernsee Commissioners Meeting, which had been held the day before the joint meeting between offices and users, had proceeded. After that, the participants exchanged their views on how to proceed with discussions on the items of a list of agenda items for the system harmonization that was submitted by the IP5 users.
Specifically, JIPA explained differences among the Trilateral Offices in the judgment on "description requirements" and the like in the list of agenda items which JIPA had researched and studied, identified issues to be solved, and proposed an approach to how the discussion should be conducted. The JIPA's approach was basically agreed on by the Trilateral Offices, and will be examined by the IP5 Offices.

Before the joint meeting, we had the 20th Trilateral User Meeting among only users on April 8. In the users meeting, we talked about how to proceed with discussions on the list of agenda items for the system harmonization, and exchanged opinions on each topic in preparation for the meeting with the Patent Offices on the following day.

The next trilateral meetings will be held in Japan next spring.

• Back