Top 5 Design Offices Meet in Alicante to Discuss Protection of Emerging Designs

On December 4 and 5, 2017, the members of the Industrial Design 5 (ID5) met at the EUIPO offices in Alicante, Spain for the 3^rd ID5 Annual Meeting.  The ID5 is an Industrial design framework comprised of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the Korean Intellectual property office (KIPO), the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (SIPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Like its predecessors the IP5 and TM5, the ID5 was founded in 2015 with the goal of promoting and furthering the development of highly-efficient and interoperable industrial design protection systems across the five jurisdictions. In that vein, the ID5 members have committed to considering twelve projects related to this goal, including consideration of statistics, drawings requirements, and priority document exchange.

On first day of the meeting, office representatives exchanged status updates on the twelve projects, including KIPO’s publication of 2016 statistics. These statistics reveal, among other things, the number of design examiners that work at each office and that SIPO has the most post-grant invalidation activity of the five members.  KIPO also launched the newly designed ID5 website.  On the second day of the meeting, user groups from across the world were invited for presentations and feedback discussions on the protection schemes for emerging types of designs (including virtual reality, augmented reality, and holographic projections) as well as on the technical matters associated with filing and examining applications for these new types of designs (including the ability to file animated movie clips and 3D renderings of physical designs).  The user groups also reiterated the need for electronic priority document exchange.

At the close of the meeting, KIPO assumed responsibility as the Secretariat for 2018 and will host the next Annual ID5 meeting in Korea in 2018.