The 12th IPR Office Directors' Meeting was jointly held by the Korean Patent Office, the CNIPA of China, the European Patent Office, the Japanese Patent Office, and the US Patent and Trademark Office in Incheon, South Korea this June. Francis Gurry, the Director General of the WIPO attended the meeting as observer.

At the meeting, the Directors of the 5 IPR offices signed the joined declaration of cooperation of 2019. The statement summarizes the cooperation results of the five offices in the recent years in the areas of coordination and simplification of procedures, enhancement of work sharing, improvement of patent quality, convenient provision of patent information and statistical data, and timely revision of patent classification, meanwhile, it points out that the future cooperation among the 5 offices will focus on global technological change, providing high quality and reliable review, and innovation and improvement of the 5 offices cooperation mechanism.

(Source: CNIPA website)