EPO and Chinese IP office sign bilateral co-operation plan

2018/09/28

The EPO and the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) have agreed on a co-operation programme for 2019 as part of their long-term strategic partnership on strengthening the patent system. The 2019 co-operation work plan was signed by EPO President António Campinos and CNIPA Commissioner Shen Changyu on September 21 at their annual heads of office meeting in Munich. The plan focuses on areas such as patent law and patent examination guidelines, examination quality, data exchange, classification, search tools and machine translation, and also foresees a joint study on computer-implemented inventions.  CNIPA received more than 1.3 million applications for invention patents in 2017. China is now the fifth most active country of origin for European patent applications, with strong growth from Chinese applicants at the EPO in recent years (+17% in 2017).

Source: EPO