A Global Dossier Task Force (GDTF) was created to ensure that the services developed align with the needs of all stakeholders. It is made up of the IP5 offices, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and IP5 Industry Groups: American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), Business Europe (BE), Japan Intellectual Property Association (JIPA), Korea Intellectual Property Association (KINPA), and Patent Protection Association of China (PPAC).
In January 2015, the first GDTF meeting took place in Suzhou, China, where IP5 Industry identified five short-term priorities for the offices to explore. There was an agreement among the IP5 that each office would define the scope of a particular topic identified by industry groups as short-term priorities:
- Inter-Office document exchange – sharing of application data between offices, e.g. prior art exchanges, supporting documents, bibliographic data updates, etc.
- Alerting functionality – an automated mechanism that alerts other offices, applicants, and/or representatives when there is a change in the status of an application
- XML document provision – enabling the ability to download application content in XML format
- Applicant name standardization – an automated mechanism that will assign a single, unique name to entities with applications pending in multiple offices
- Legal status – a mechanism to allow users to view the legal status of an application in another office
The IP5 offices have been working on each of the priorities in consultation and coordination with the GDTF.
The ultimate goal of Global Dossier is to allow for facilitation of preplanned cross-filings; one-portal management of cross-filed applications; elimination of the need to file duplicate documents in multiple offices (e.g., priority documents, prior art citations, etc.); and, other functions allowing for greater stakeholder involvement in application management.
Learn more about USPTO's efforts on the Inter-Office Document Exchange Priority.
