EPO and SIPO Launch First Global Dossier Service

The European Patent Office (EPO) and the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO) today announced the launch of a new EPO service, called the Global Dossier, that displays European and Chinese dossier content on a family of patent applications (applications for the same invention filed at multiple offices).

The Global Dossier builds on the groundwork of the IP5 offices - a forum for co-operation among the patent offices of China, Japan, Korea, the US and the EPO aimed at modernising the global patent system.  The service uses an IP5-agreed standard to retrieve on demand, via the European Patent Register, SIPO file-wrapper content for Chinese applications also filed at the EPO. It performs an automatic machine translation when Chinese documents are requested in English.

Other IP5 offices will soon start providing data for the service, which will further enhance its value.

(Source: EPO News)