"An intellectual property world where Intellectual Property Organizations (IPOs) support a common search and examination environment so each has the ability to produce and reproduce equivalent search results for each application that is examined."

Korea is recognized globally as an innovation leader with its membership in the "IP5", the forum representing the top five intellectual property offices in the world. In addition to Korea, the IP5 includes the United States, China, the European Union, and Japan, and thanks to the new agreement, Korea will now join the other IP5 countries in offering the resources of IP.com's Prior Art Database in order to ensure the quality and strength of patents.

IP.com announced a formal agreement with the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) for the use of IP.com's Prior Art Database (PAD). The agreement was overseen by KIPO's representative Director Mr. General D.H. Jae and IP.com's exclusive Korea partner Global Techlink Inc. (GTL), an intellectual property consultancy, and signed by GTL CEO Mr. Johney Kim on October 18, 2010, at Seoul's Daejeon Government Complex.

"We are incredibly honored to be partnering with the Korean Intellectual Property Office to offer them complete access to the Prior Art Database," said Thomas J. Colson, CEO, IP.com. "Since only one existing prior art can invalidate a patent, the PAD is essential to a thorough vetting of any patent application. Companies and individuals who now apply for sole control of their intellectual property in Korea can now be confident that they have been subject to a rigorous and comprehensive patent approval process by the KIPO."

GTL CEO Kim added, "Local patent quality will be improved by the launch of IP.com's PAD service. Patent analytic firms, companies, universities, and organizations will no longer be dependent on ineffective research methods, and will have better knowledge of international trends and histories in research and development."

IP.com has the most extensive prior art database in the world, with IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Sony, and other global companies publishing their prior art through IP.com. In addition to the IP5, the intellectual property offices of 34 countries around the world now rely on IP.com's PAD, and that number continues to grow.

The U.S. Commercial Service, the trade promotion arm of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration, along with the Korean Association for Intellectual Property Service (KAIPS) honored IP.com and its Korean partner Global TechLink Inc. (GTL), in an official event at the Grand InterContinental Hotel in Seoul, Korea, on December 9, 2010.

The “Defensive Publication Strategy Seminar” marked the official introduction of IP.com’s Prior Art Database to Korea under formal agreement with the Korean Intellectual Property Office. Among the presenters were Man Gi Paik, Chairman, KAIPS; Mark O’Grady, Commercial Attache, U.S. Embassy Korea; Thomas J. Colson, CEO, IP.com; and Johney Kim, CEO, Global TechLink. In attendance were a number of representatives of the international business community, as well as Korean and U.S. government officials.

“It was a great honor for us to have both the American and Korean governments to join forces in recognition of this new relationship,” said Colson. ”As a member of the IP5 countries, Korea is among the leaders in intellectual property development and patent applications, and we are proud that IP.com’s database will play an integral role in assuring a seamless approval process for corporations, organizations, and individuals.”

KAIPS Chairman Paik is a qualified patent attorney with Kim & Chang who also acts as a high-tech policy consultant to the Korean Government. He is also a member of the Intellectual Property Policy Committee of KIPO, and the vice chairman of the Intellectual Property Protection Association (AIPPI) in Korea.

The Five IP Offices (IP5) is the name given to a forum of the five largest intellectual property offices in the world that is being set up to improve the efficiency of the examination process for patents worldwide. The members of IP5 are:

• European Patent Office (EPO),
• Japan Patent Office (JPO),
• Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO),
• State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO),
• United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

The vision of the IP5 Offices is global co-operation, which has been defined as "the elimination of unnecessary duplication of work among the IP5 Offices, the enhancement of patent examination efficiency and quality and guarantee of the stability of patent right". The objective is to address the ever-increasing backlog at the world's five biggest intellectual property offices. As the world sees economic barriers between nations fade away, innovators want their intellectual creations protected concurrently in multiple major markets. Hence, applications for the same technology are filed at more than one patent office. The solution to the backlog problem is to reduce, to the maximum extent possible, the duplication of work which takes place at each office for a family of patent applications.

The IP5 Offices account for 90% of all patent applications filed worldwide and for 93% of all work carried out under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Director Kappos is a good get for an interview with any professional journalist, but better yet it was Joff Wild of IAM who got this scoop.

Although he has only been in his job for a little under a year, Kappos is a well-known figure in Europe. He was a frequent traveller across the Atlantic during his time as head of IP at IBM and as a result has met many senior figures at the European Patent Office, as well as corporate IP big hitters. And you can say the same about Asia too. As a result, when it comes to the international aspects of his job, there has been no big learning curve. Kappos was familiar with the major issues already. It will come as no surprise to any reader of this blog to know that these are focused on closer co-operation between patent offices in order to improve quality, lower costs and reduce the huge patent backlog.

What makes Kappos different from his contemporaries, however, is the mandate he has for the job he was appointed to do. Unlike the presidents of the other big five patent offices – the EPO, the Japan Patent Office, the Korean IP Office and China’s State IP Office – Kappos is a political appointment, not a civil servant.

Read the great article by Joff Wild as a guest author on Gene Quinn's IP Watchdog Blog. Congrats to Gene Quinn, too, for arranging such a great guest on his blog. Well done, Gene, scooping even the official blog by Director Kappos at the USPTO.

Google Patent Search enables users to search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest them.

All patents available through Google Patent Search come from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Patents issued in the United States are public domain government information, and images of the entire database of U.S. patents are readily available online via the USPTO website.

Using the same technology that powers Google Book Search, Google has converted the entire image database of U.S. patents into a format that’s easy to search. You can search the full text of U.S. patents from the Google Patent Search homepage, or visit the Advanced Patent Search page to search by criteria like patent number, inventor, and filing date.

Google and the USPTO have entered into an agreement to make bulk patent and trademark information available to the public at no charge.

Earlier this month, Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) David Kappos announced that the USPTO has entered into a no-cost, two-year agreement with Google to make bulk electronic patent and trademark public data available to the public in bulk form. Under this agreement, the USPTO is providing Google with existing bulk, electronic files, which Google will host without modification for the public free of charge.

Director Kappos said the USPTO does not currently have the technical capability to provide this public information in a bulk machine readable format that is desired by the intellectual property (IP) community. This arrangement is to serve as a bridge as the USPTO develops an acquisition strategy which will allow the USPTO to enter into a contract with a contractor to retrieve and distribute USPTO patent and trademark bulk public data. The contractor will be capable of acquiring this bulk data and providing it to the public.

“The USPTO is committed to providing increased transparency as called for by the President’s Open Government Initiative. An important element of that transparency is making valuable public patent and trademark information more widely available in a bulk form so companies and researchers can download it for analysis and research,” said Under Secretary Kappos. “Because the USPTO does not currently have the technical capability to offer the data in bulk form from our own Web site, we have teamed with Google to provide the data in a way that is convenient and at no cost for those who desire it.”

“We’re happy to work with the USPTO to make patent and trademark data more accessible and useful,” said Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager for Google. “It’s important to make public data easier to gather and analyze. And when the data is free, that’s even better.”

Until now, the USPTO’s public data in bulk form has been provided solely as a fee-based service. The USPTO estimates that nearly ten terabytes of information will be made available through Google.

This has been described by intellectual property professionals as "good news and bad news." Good news that all this patent and trademark information previously available for a fee is now freely accessible. Bad news that it's only  available in "bulk" form, which is less useful than it might otherwise be. It's also limited to United States Patent and Trademark data. So far, so good.

IP.com provides companies and intellectual property professionals with tools and solutions to more effectively manage their IP and innovations. Whether your objective is searching for patents or prior art, defensively publishing your innovations, obtaining research prior to applying for a patent or for other IP-related reasons, or realizing improved IP processes, IP.com has the right solution.

Our Intellectual Property Library website is a free international database of patent and patent-related publications. Our goal is to encourage worldwide access to resources where innovators can explore and understand patents, technologies, and related art. The database contains an ever increasing array of international patents (as published by the authorities) as well as non-patent literature (including our own Prior Art Database). The site features such things as full text and English translation searching along with unique "more-like-this" capabilities.

Start by Searching the Library or visiting the Library's Resource Center.

Like Google, IP.com's Intellectual Property Library is free.

Thanks wasn't expected, as we hadn't done anything big; just a small favor in sharing with our followers on Twitter, a #FollowFriday or #FF hashtag, recommending they follow the European Patent Office, which is officially @EPOorg on Twitter.

We're grateful that the EPO was thoughtful enough to favor IP.com with their public note of thanks on Twitter. That little social gesture by the folks at the EPO means a lot to us, and we appreciate it.

Some call it the favor economy, and it's evident elsewhere in social media, like @uspto on Twitter. Soon, we hope, the USPTO will be expressing appreciation for the very professional way that Patent Attorneys J. Matthew Buchanan Mandy Sinclair and Stephen Nipper have been maintaining in Trust for the USPTO the username @uspto on Twitter, with the hope and expectation that the United States Patent and Trademark Office will want to have an official interaction with its followers, as do many other government agencies on Twitter. Of all the questions concerning reform at the USPTO, "Why aren't we on Twitter?" isn't the most important, but it's easy to fix.

The USPTO has just announced that it's officially on Facebook where they posted this message from Director David Kappos:

Welcome to the USPTO’s page on Facebook! We're excited to be launching this forum to communicate with you and share the latest news from the USPTO. We know thousands of innovators, members of the intellectual property practice community, and USPTO employees are active on Facebook, so we’re pleased to be able to bring information and updates to you here. But this is also a place where you can tell us what YOU think. We encourage you to comment on our posts and tell us what you “like” and “dislike.” Check back here daily, as we will be providing regular updates including press releases and other news, details on upcoming events, speeches, updates from my blog, photos, video, fun facts and more. Just like checking your Facebook page, we hope visiting our page will become part of your daily routine.

You can also follow David Kappos' public blog Director's Forum on the USPTO website and post comments on his blog posts about the many changes and reforms at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Now that the USPTO is using social media to communicate effectively on the Director's public blog and on Facebook, hopefully it won't be long before the United States Patent and Trademark Office is officially @uspto on Twitter, as well.

Until then, thanks Matt, Steve, and Mandy for all you're doing, without expectations, because it's the right thing to do.

J. Matthew Buchanan, a registered patent attorney who maintains the website "Promote the Progress" and who's @jmattbuchanan on Twitter, registered the username @USPTO  in trust for the United States Patent and Trademark Office, for its official Twitter stream. Not only the USPTO, but intellectual property professionals everywhere, no doubt, appreciate Matt Buchanan's foresight and professionalism.

The European Patent Office already has its official Twitter address @EPOorg and many agencies of the US Government, such as the Federal Communications Commission @FCC, @whitehouse and the President @BarackObama are on Twitter.

From the conversations we've been engaged in with intellectual property professionals on Twitter, there seems to be a consensus that many will follow the USPTO @USPTO as soon as its Twitter account becomes official. Hopefully, that will happen soon. Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Recently, the Commerce Department’s United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced in this press release that the Government of India has granted the agency’s patent examiners access to a new digital database containing a compilation of traditional Indian knowledge.  Access to the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) is important for both India and the United States to prevent misappropriation of traditional knowledge.

The new database, developed jointly by India’s Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) and the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (AYUSH), includes over 200,000 traditional medicine formulations on Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha comprising 30 million pages.  The TKDL contains text-searchable English-language translations of these sources, permitting USPTO examiners to search thousands of years of India’s accumulated traditional knowledge.  The TKDL also contains translations into French, German, Japanese and Spanish, from these sources, originally written in Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and Urdu.

This database will be an important addition to the growing array of search tools on traditional knowledge from around the world that is already available to USPTO examiners. These tools include dictionaries, formularies, handbooks, and historical or classical works, as well as databases such as the TKDL. USPTO examiners use these tools to help prevent the patenting, and thereby misappropriation, of existing traditional knowledge.