EU, US, Japan agree common patent form

The agreement to adopt the Common Application Format was taken at a meeting of Trilateral Strategic Working Group in Munich last week. It will allow applicants to prepare a single application that will be valid in Europe, the US and Japan.

The Trilateral Offices agreed the common application format in consultation with users in November 2007. The three patent offices say the move will provide significant savings to applicants in the filing and processing of patent applications.

At the trilateral meeting a number of other joint projects were agreed. In particular, pilot projects on work-sharing will be launched later this year, including a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) project between the European and US patent offices, which aims to achieve faster processing of applications at the US Patent and Trademark Office that have already been filed at the European Patent Office.

The Strategic Handling of Applications for Rapid Examination or SHARE project, where offices give priority to examining applications for which they are the office of first filing, will also be implemented.

It was also agreed that European Patent Office will lead a study to identify best practices and develop a roadmap for quality management in the patent procedure.

The Trilateral Co-operation was set up in 1983 to tackle challenges common to the three patent offices. The three agreed on a new governance structure last November, resulting in the formation of the Strategic Working Group.