Five Advanced Patent Offices Collaborate on Climate Change Response

The five advanced patent offices come together to tackle climate change.

On the 14th and 15th (local time), the heads of the five advanced patent offices (Korea, the United States, China, Japan, and the European Patent Office; hereinafter IP5) gathered in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, to hold a joint meeting with industry representatives and a heads of office meeting, the Patent Office announced on the 16th.

Lee In-sil, Commissioner of the Korean Intellectual Property Office (fourth from the left), is taking a commemorative photo after the meeting with the heads of the five advanced intellectual property offices (IP5). Photo by Korean Intellectual Property Office

At this meeting, the patent offices discussed the role of intellectual property in effectively responding to climate change and ways to cooperate with each other.

First, Commissioner Lee In-sil of the Korean Intellectual Property Office introduced domestic intellectual property policies such as the ‘priority examination system’ to support the rapid granting of rights for inventions in the green technology sector and the ‘intellectual property finance project’ to facilitate smooth commercialization.

She also announced a blueprint to establish a ‘Korean-style Green Technology Patent Classification (KPC)’ system to systematically organize and accumulate patent data in the green technology field, enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of prior art searches and effectively grasping patent application trends.

During the meeting, a new agenda item proposed by Korea, ‘Research on whether to recognize the relevant artificial intelligence as the inventor for inventions involving AI (Inventorship of AI generated inventions),’ was also finally approved.

Through this, the Patent Office evaluates that an opportunity has been created for Korea to continuously lead discussions related to advanced technologies.

The IP5 also agreed to explicitly include ‘realization of sustainable development’ in the IP5 Vision Statement, which had previously focused on examination cooperation and system harmonization.

The Patent Office emphasizes that this provides a basis for the IP5 to cooperate in various ways in the field of intellectual property to solve common human problems such as climate change.

Meanwhile, next year’s IP5 heads meeting will be held in Korea. Commissioner Lee In-sil said, “The Patent Office will make every effort to prepare for the ‘17th IP5 Heads Meeting’ to be held in Korea next year,” adding, “We will ensure that next year’s meeting creates a global intellectual property environment friendly to domestic companies and serves as an opportunity to enhance our status as a leading intellectual property nation.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.