IP5 Offices Global Dossier Goes Live At The USPTO

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has launched an online dossier service for national patent application data jointly provided by the IP5 offices (USPTO, JPO, KIPO, EPO, and SIPO). The general public now has access to a single web portal to view, track and download prosecution history documents of any national/regional patent application at the five patent offices, including consolidated information on examination progress and prior art citations for different members of the same patent family.

Although the EPO has provided a similar dossier service for some time, its functionality is rather limited. The EPO system allows the user to individually select a national patent application and view its information in a separate page, while the new USPTO Global Dossier features an integrated interface to view all family members in a more intuitive way, together with their lists of documents and examination status. Not only can patent publication numbers be used as keywords for searching in the dossier, but also patent application numbers. In addition, in the dossier of a particular patent family member, the dossiers of other family members can be accessed via a drop-down menu. This avoids the need to return to the patent family summary page.

One of the most exciting functions provided by the new USPTO service is the enhanced real-time translation function for documents sent or received by a patent office (referred to below as "intermediate documents") during the prosecution history. This service allows an instant and qualitative way of converting into English any Asian-language contents in intermediate documents, such as official communications, claim amendments and applicants' arguments. This will likely be of great assistance to patent stakeholders in English-speaking countries such as the UK. In the past, companies have often been forced to spend considerable time and cost obtaining...