IP5 cooperation is a mechanism of the five largest IP offices in the world to improve the efficiency of the examination process for patents worldwide, the IP5 official website states.

The five organizations between them handle some 80 percent of the world's patent applications and 95 percent of such work is carried out under the Patent Cooperation Treaty, an international patent law treaty supplying a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions in each of its contracting states.

Cooperation among the five IP offices began in 2007 and has directly benefited companies and individuals across the world, according to fiveipoffices.org.

The partnership helps IP5 members improve their services and allows innovators in the five regions easy access to a database shared by the five patent offices.

The website also offers innovators a quick reference guide to the most important features of the patent systems in the IP5 regions.

The features include website links to the five offices, legal texts on patents, terms of patent rights protection and even payment of renewal fees.

The IP5 cooperation covers an annual meeting of the office heads to decide on work strategies and review their cooperation achievements.

The 2015 meeting begins on Wednesday in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, and will end on Friday.

The World Intellectual Property Organization usually observes the IP5 head meetings and other conferences under the mechanism.

The five IP offices set up three groups that are individually responsible for developing the International Patent Classifications further in areas where the IP5 are interested; providing applicants with IP5 patent information and simplifying filing of applications at the other four IP offices; and sharing work to increase the patent examination capacity of the IP5 and improve the quality of their searches and examinations.

zhuan ti

(China Daily 05/20/2015 page17)