On 31 January, we submitted our response to the government’s call for input regarding a trade agreement with South Korea.
We told government that we supported such an agreement and explained that CIPA and our colleagues at the Korean Patent Attorneys Association believed it would be beneficial for users of the South Korean IP system if Korean Patent Attorneys could represent their clients in patent infringement matters in the same way that UK Patent Attorneys can represent their clients before the UK courts in litigation cases.
In the UK, representation rights for patent attorneys for infringement matters before the Supreme Court were envisaged in legislation passed in 2007 and enacted from 2011. This has resulted in significant benefits for UK businesses. We stated that such a change in South Korea would also be beneficial for UK businesses as they would obtain reduced legal costs if Korean Patent Attorneys were allowed to take infringement matters to the court.
We added that international harmonisation of IP would be beneficial, that we would support a commitment from both parties to work together to facilitate the ongoing harmonisation initiatives and that we stood ready to assist the Department for International Trade with detailed comments on the IP provisions once the negotiations commenced.
In March we submitted our response to a UK government consultation on Substantive Patent Law Harmonisation (SPLH). We said that we had long-supported SPLH, had monitored the progress of the Industry Trilateral (IT3) discussions on SPLH, and the publication of the increasingly more refined versions of the Elements Paper arising from these, since the IT3 discussions started at the end of the Trilateral Offices Tegernsee process. We said that our support for SPLH was based on the assumption that any harmonisation enacted would be to the benefit of the users of the system and to society as a whole.
CIPA is a founder member of the Association of National Institutes of Intellectual Property Attorneys (ANIPA), a pan-European organisation for institutes or associations representing IP professionals. ANIPA member institutes represent the interests of IP professionals in a country or region, where those IP professionals are recognised by the national Intellectual Property Office or a corresponding authority such as the European Patent Organisation (EPO).
2023 saw a return of in-person ANIPA meetings held in Bordeaux (June) and Krakow (November), with delegates representing institutes from the UK (CIPA and CITMA), Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, and the epi.
ANIPA meetings enable delegates to discuss recent developments in national IP law in member states; receive updates on the EPO and the European Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO); receive updates on the Unitary Patent (UP) and Unified Patent Court (UPC); and consider other areas of mutual interests. Topics covered in 2023 included changes to the European Qualifying Examination (EQE); the new EPO strategic plan; digital transformation at the EPO; fee changes at the EPO; the launch of the UPC, including issues relating to the underpinning Case Management System (CMS); the EU consultation on SPCs and SEPs; and rights of representation and professional regulation in ANIPA member states.
CIPA Council member and Chair of our International Liaison Committee, Tony Rollins, attended the Global Network of National IP Practitioner Associations (GNIPA) Summit in Istanbul, which was held after the AIPPI Conference and was organised by GNIPA and the Japan Patent Attorneys Association. The participating organisations included AIPLA (USA), IPO (USA), FICPI, AIPPI, ABPI (Brazil), ACPAA (China), ASPA (Singapore), European Patent Office, US Patent and Trade Mark Office, EU Intellectual Property Office, IPAT (Thailand), Japan Patent Office, KPAA (Korea) and World Intellectual Property Office. Kay Konishi of the JPAA was the chair of the conference.
The Global Network provides a forum for national IP associations to come together and share best practice. The Global Network aims to bring key international IP issues directly to the attorneys themselves. There were sessions held on harmonisation, where BusinessEurope gave its new position on SPLH which was not supported by the IP Federation. There were further sessions on artificial intelligence, presented by CIPA Council member Daniel Chew, the activities of IP5 and IP5 industry collaboration and designs.