The Movement for Common Patent through the World

January 9, 2003
Harakenzo World Patent & Trademark
Foreign Department Manager: Masaru Kashimoto

The speed at which technology permeates the world becomes faster and faster every year. Moreover, many manufacturing bases of industrially advanced nations are established in developing countries in which a production cost is low. In such a situation, it is an ideal that novel and useful technology should be equally protected in every country. However, under the present condition, the wall of the legal framework based on the principle of territorial jurisdiction blocks the technology from being transferred globally and smoothly, while intellectual property is practically used more and more widely across the border.
With respect to the Patent, Patent Offices are promoting the cooperation between three Patent Offices of Japan, U.S.A., and Europe. But they should further promote the cooperation for examination between three Patent Offices, and should make more effort to enable each company to acquire a common patent right which is valid in three territories simultaneously aiming at global and smooth extension of their business. In the future, realization of world common patent will be desired. In order to realize it, the subject that should be solved first is to mutually authorize the result of search performed by each country.

Regarding the above, the commissioners of three Patent Offices of Japan, U.S.A., and Europe held the meeting in Tokyo lately, and they reached agreement on shifting to the system that three Patent Offices examine in cooperation. This was an epoch-making event. The Pilot Project was carried out among the three Patent Offices. In this project, each Patent Office tries to mutually reuse the result of prior art search that they performed individually as the preliminary step to the examination. Then, since they have the confidence that the pilot project is effective in reducing troubles in examination, they consider its detail system so as to realize mutual use of the search result in practice.
Especially, the system enables Patent Office to mutually use search and examination results by exchanging the data processed electronically and saved in each Patent Office trough network. In this way, it is expected that examiners can examine the common application to Patent Offices of each country more efficiently and promptly by mutually using the result of search and examination performed by the other Patent Office.
Moreover, in the third policy dialogue meeting of the Patent Office commissioners of Japan, China, and Korea held in Beijing recently, the commissioners emphasized that the tripartite cooperation system was useful for cooperation and development in the field of intellectual property of East Asia. And they were also unanimous that it was quite important to protect intellectual property appropriately and effectively for the progress of technology and the promotion of trading and investment in East Asia. In such process, it is expected that the cooperation system for examination be established among the above three countries.
In the next step, it is required that the Patent Offices mutually authorize the patent approved previously by each country, and further required that the common patent through core three countries, Japan, U.S.A., and Europe should be established and developed so as to realize the world common patent. In order to solve the subject, it is necessary at first to aim at a harmonization of the patent system of each country. Since it is natural that there are various treaties and laws in respective counties, it is required to make a concession over the system unification. And then, the unified system requires the unified operation. For example, it is necessary to establish the operation system accepted by all countries about processing data by using computer, unification of examination standard, and management of database and so on.
Finally, the examiners are required to have international view. The fairness of examination should be kept that the examiners may not give favorable decision to the application from their own country.
Although there are many subjects accumulated to solve, the establishment of the worldwide cooperation system for examination is desired to be realized early because such system contributes to promotion international research activities and to activation global economy. Also for this reason, it is necessary to approach an international harmonization of the system and its operation under the leadership of the three Patent Offices of Japan, U.S.A., and Europe.