JAPAN, US, EURO PATENT AGREEMENT

At a meeting late last month of the heads of the Japanese, US and European Patent Office, agreement was reached for cooperation on the integration of the region's patent systems in order to handle the escalating number of patent applications.

JPA Commissioner Wataru Fukasawa announced at a press conference that the three parties had agreed to use: the same information retrieval tools to prevent duplication on searching; to exchanges of staff in order to study how to streamline investigations; and to set up a working group to decide on details.

In this respect, the three offices agreed to provide information for those using the proposed databases at the lowest possible cost and to unify fees for providing information in areas of DNA databases, stores information related to genetic subjects and first pages of patent documents.