Newsletter
Intellectual Property Office to Launch Industry Collaborative Interview Program
At a meeting of the Patent Examination Advisory Consultation Committee on 12 May 2021, the Intellectual Property Office ("IPO") stated that it would like to launch an "Industry Collaborative Interview Program” in the near future to benefit patent applicants' portfolios and to enhance the efficiency and quality of the IPO’s patent examination.
According to the IPO's preliminary plan, in the case of a forward-looking invention patent for which substantive examination has been requested and for which the applicant has not yet received any examination results, the patent examiner may, ex officio, notify the applicant and hold an interview if: (1) the examiner considers it necessary; or (2) it is requested by the applicant, and the examiner considers that such application relates to forward-looking technology, and such interview may facilitate better understanding thereof. The applicant’s technical personnel and the examiner handling the invention may jointly participate in a patent technology presentation meeting for a face-to-face discussion on technical contents of the invention.
According to the IPO's plan at present, forward-looking technology includes fields such as stem cell and regenerative medicine, neural networks, GAA FET 3nm process, etc. However, the examiner may also independently judge whether a certain invention belongs to forward-looking technology based on the facts of each case. A patent applicant may also request a single interview to address several invention patent applications; however, in principle, such an interview should be limited to less than 10 applications.
Under the current plan, the examiner would not provide any preliminary examination results at the interview, but would issue a notice of the examination results within six months after the aforementioned presentation meeting. Nonetheless, the specific details of the program are still pending deliberation by the IPO.
Moreover, under current practice, in addition to Article 42 of the Patent Act, stipulating that the IPO may, upon request or ex officio, notify the applicant to hold an interview, the IPO provides various other approaches to allow an interview before patent examination, such as the Patent Positive Examination Program for Startups (the “Positive Interview”), or Collective Interview for Relevant Invention Patent Applications Program (the “Collective Interview”).
The Positive Interview is available upon request by an applicant who meets the definition of a startup company (a business that has been established for less than five years). Before the interview, the examiner will provide a novelty and non-obviousness search report, brief opinions with respect to other grounds for not granting a patent, and constructive suggestions. In principle, the patent examiner will issue a notice of examination results within 2 months after the interview.
The Collective Interview is also subject to request by the applicant. Provided that (1) the applicant of the collective patent applications is the same; (2) request for substantive examination has been made for all of the collective patent applications and they have all been laid open; and (3) the applicant has not received a notice of the examination results from the IPO, the patent applicant may request a Collective Interview for 2 to 10 invention patent applications that are technically related and that have not been claimed as domestic priority right from among any of the aforementioned patent applications. In principle, the IPO will issue a notice of examination results within 3 months after the interview (or within 3 months after the applicant files a response or submits amendments within a time period designated at the interview).
In order to improve the development of an enterprise, it is recommended that patent applicants pay close attention to implementation of the Industry Collaborative Interview Program, and comprehensively compare various interview approaches while formulating their own patent portfolio strategies.