AI IP5 Cooperation

【 IP5 】

In the face of continual growth in the number of patent filings and pending applications at many patent offices across the world, the five largest patent offices from South Korea, Europe, the United States, Japan and China created a comprehensive cooperation framework that is currently widely known as the "IP5" in 2007 to work together to promote efficiency and quality of patent examination at the member offices under collaborative work-sharing projects and ensure stability of patent rights across their respective territories

IP5 NET/AI Roadmap

The NET/AI task force team, which was created at the IP5 Heads of Offices Meeting hosted by KIPO in 2019, has set up the IP5 NET/AI Roadmap (Jun. 2021)

* The creation of the TF team was endorsed at the IP5 Heads of Offices Meeting to draw up a roadmap in response to global technology trend in the 4IR era.

  • The major five IP Offices (IP5) suggested a blueprint on IP5 cooperation for improving transparency of examination practices and predictability of examination results by users, appling NET/AI to patent examination processes, etc.
IP5 Cooperation by Field
  • (Law‧System) To mutually share patent examination cases and practices regarding NET/AI related inventions; and to conduct comparative studies focusing on legal aspects by examination guideline*, etc.* Guideline on recognition of an AI inventor, patent eligibility, sufficiency of description, etc.
  • (IT) To share experiences of NET/AI based searches, classification, machine translation, block chain, etc.; and to carry out an IP5 cooperation project for adapting the current patent administration to the 4IR era, etc.
  • (Patent Classification) To advance classification in consideration of NET/AI; and to share existing classification practices and AI-applied classification·learning data·models; and to set up assessment criteria on AI-applied classification system, etc.
  • (Statistics) To understand classification trend through regular exchange of statistics regarding NET/AI related technology trend; and to create a methodology for statics analysis, etc.

Proposal and Endorsement of an IP5 Project regarding an AI Inventor

(Background) International applications that list AI as an inventor are increasingly filed, but major countries have acknowledged a natural person only as an inventor in practice, by defining that a person who has created an invention or a successor in title will be granted with a patent.
  • → Necessity of discussion for setting up an international norm regarding ‘Whether to Accept AI as an Inventor’ has been raised.
(Project Proposal and Endorsement) KIPO proposed to share ‘the legal systems and court cases of AI inventors’ to lead in setting up an international norm, and the project was endorsed at the IP5 Heads of Offices Meeting held in 2023 (Jun. 2023).
  • (Scope of the Project) To collect laws‧legal systems and court cases regarding AI inventors, To commonly present the collected data*, To rapidly share relevant information where AI-related laws and legal systems are substantially revised in the future.* Scheduled to present the final result at the IP5 Heads of Offices Meeting to be held in Korea, 2024
  • Last updated 23 May 2024
  • Patent Legal Administration Division