This posting came with a set of presentation slides which you can find at the end of the post.
The Industry Trilateral (of which IPO is a member) initially proposed a Common Citation Document (CCD). In response, the Trilateral have launched an electronic capability which consolidates access to citation data from the Trilateral Offices combining a priority-based family of patent applications with the cited prior art for each family application. It is possible to enter the database by means of application numbers or patent numbers and obtain a listing of the entire patent family filed in the Trilateral Patent Offices, as well as all of the other offices that send information to the European Patent Office database. Together with each of these applications is included the citations cited against that application in that particular country, as well as its applicable status as X, Y, A, etc. For certain offices such as the European Patent Office and others, the data includes “enhanced information”, including particular sections of the citation that are relevant and the particular claims against which those citations are relevant. This is the typical information in the Search Reports provided under the PCT. The USPTO and JPO are planning in the near future to include such “enhanced information” in their reporting of the citations to this CCD.
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The Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys recently published the 7th edition of the CIPA “Guide to the Patent Acts”. This treatise is essential for practitioners seeking to track the correspondence between central themes of US and UK/EP patent law, such as patentable subject matter, utility (as we would call it), enablement and the written description requirement, as well as to obtain a review of more specialized topics such as supplemental protection certificates and jurisdictional issues.
