Recently, at their annual meeting in Suzhou, the Commissioner of the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA), Shen Changyu, and the President of the European Patent Office (EPO), António Campinos, agreed to enhance their bilateral cooperation in the framework of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).The aim is to give patent applicants filing an international patent application in English at the CNIPA as Receiving Office the choice to opt for the EPO as their International Searching Authority (ISA).
It is expected that this new option will be offered in the course of next year, and be implemented as a two-year pilot program.
For Chinese applicants, this step would offer an additional option to optimize their international patent strategy, especially when considering protection in Europe. As a result, Chinese users interested in accelerating the prosecution of their applications will, by selecting the EPO as their ISA, gain up to one year by entering into the European phase earlier and getting direct examination of their files, without the need for a European supplementary search.
http://english.cnipa.gov.cn/news/officialinformation/1144380.htm
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