EPO President António Campinos met with Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Andrei Iancu in Munich on 12 September. They discussed recent developments in intellectual property and co-operation between the two offices.
The heads of office spoke about their respective strategic plans. Campinos and Iancu also addressed the rising importance of artificial intelligence, both in the patent granting process and as the subject-matter of patent applications, in addition to developments related to the Unitary Patent and Unified Patent Court. Their talks also covered ongoing activities in the trilateral co-operation between the EPO, USPTO and Japan Patent Office, as well as the co-operation among the five largest intellectual property offices in the world (IP5). A further topic of discussion was their close co-operation on the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), which has evolved from a bilateral EPO-USPTO initiative to an international classification standard used by 29 offices worldwide.
The two heads of office last met in Korea in June 2019. Since then, the EPO’s Strategic Plan 2023 has been endorsed and approved by the EPO’s member states. Mr Campinos briefed his counterpart on the adjustments the EPO will make to implement the Plan and underlined the potential for further co-operation with the USPTO.
One of several IT projects discussed during Mr Iancu’s visit was CPC International, which was launched in August, and aimed at updating the CPC infrastructure and the way CPC data from national offices is stored, displayed and searched. President Campinos expressed his satisfaction with the project and emphasised the role collaboration played in its successful deployment.
Source: EPO
