Successful Dialogue Boosts Patent Examiner Training in Asia-Pacific

More than 20 Member States joined the High Level Policy Dialogue to Enhance Patent Search and Examination in the Asia-Pacific Region, jointly organized by the WIPO Singapore Office and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS). Participants heard how IP offices in Australia, China, Germany, the Philippines, Singapore, Sweden, the US as well as the European Patent Office effectively train patent examiners and manage workloads.

WIPO Director General, Mr. Daren Tang and IPOS Chief Executive, Mrs. Rena Lee opened the dialogue.  In his opening address, Director General Tang stated, “Two of the great strengths of the Asia-Pacific region are its rich diversity and sense of community. In this spirit, today’s session is an opportunity for IP offices from across the region to share best practices and discuss ways of improving examinations, work-sharing approaches and training tools”.

He went on to say, “Innovation and creativity are critical to realizing our shared ambitions of building back [from the pandemic] in an inclusive and sustainable way. Optimizing patent search and examination is a fundamental part of this process”.

The dialogue resulted in a range of valuable discussions and the establishment of new connections between offices that should see greater cooperation, collaboration and harmonization in the way IP offices approach patent examiner training. The ultimate goal of all offices is to ensure their patent examiners are highly skilled in order to make consistent and accurate examinations.

The online dialogue ran over three days and also incorporated the keynote plenary session of the Global Forum on IP, organized by IPOS as part of IP Week@ SG 2021. It was organized under the WIPO – Singapore MoU which sees a number of thematic events organized for the region each year.

Feedback from the dialogue was exceptionally positive with 100% of survey respondents noting that the webinar enhanced their understanding of the way patent examination training could be conducted.