SIPO to Offer Free Downloads of IP5 Patent Information
The State Intellectual Property Office of China (SIPO) announced on 10 December 2014 that it had started trial operations of an online patent information system that offers free downloads of patent data stored in the world's five major IP offices, namely, SIPO itself, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), and the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO).
This initiative of enabling users to access patent documents available in the five offices' databases, which account for nearly 80% of the total worldwide, is made on the basis of the agreements on mutual exchanges of patent data signed by the offices in June 2014.
The new online system is expected to help advance the country's national IP strategy by providing easy access to high-quality patent data, which in turn facilitates technological innovation.
