Emily Yip & Co

Trade Mark & Patent Attorneys

(China) DAS for Priority Documents (29 February 2012)

The China State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) will become a participating patent office of the Digital Access Service on 1 March 2012 (Thursday). Under this scheme, hardcopy priority documents need not be submitted to support Chinese national applications claiming priorities from other participating patent offices, and vice versa, if the priority documents have been made available to the patent offices in the digital library.

For applications with a priority deadline before 1 March 2012, hardcopy priority documents are still required for submission.

The participating patent offices other than SIPO are:

• IP Australia
• Danish Patent and Trademark Office*
• Spanish Patent and Trademark Office
• National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland
• United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office
• International Bureau
• Japan Patent Office
• Korean Intellectual Property Office
• Swedish Patent and Registration Office*
• United States Patent and Trademark Office

*Patent Office only acts as depositing office, not accessing office

English translation of the announcement of the launch of DAS by SIPO can be found here.

Sources:
http://www.sipo.gov.cn/pdoc/das/
http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/en/priority_documents/offices.html