The meeting of the directors of the five bureaux of China's State Intellectual Property Office, U.S. patent and Trademark Office, European Patent Office, Japan's licensing office and Korea's Intellectual Property Office will be hosted by the State Intellectual Property Office of China through video conference for the first time on July 21. The annual meeting was originally scheduled to be held in Chengdu, China, in June, but it was delayed due to the epidemic and was held by video conference.

The meeting of the directors of the fifth Bureau of intellectual property is the most influential activity in the cooperation among the five bureaux. It has been widely concerned by the global intellectual property community and is of great significance to the cooperation process and future development of the five bureaux. Novel coronavirus pneumonia will be discussed in the following five aspects: the strategic measures to cope with the new crown pneumonia and the cooperation of the two bureaus in the post epidemic era. The conference will also report on the progress and the next step of the cooperation projects of emerging technologies, patent coordination, and the online conference guidance for standardizing the five new cooperation mode and the communication procedures with the five industry sector.

The five Bureau cooperation started in 2007. Over the past decade, the content of the five Bureau cooperation has expanded from ten basic projects at the beginning of its establishment to dozens of projects under multiple working groups, and has made a lot of substantive achievements in inter bureau work sharing, improvement of patent examination efficiency and quality, and dissemination and utilization of patent information. According to the new cooperation vision established in 2017, the five bureaus will continue to focus on the coordination of patent practices and procedures, strengthening work sharing, providing high-quality and timely retrieval and examination results, and seamless access to patent information, so as to promote the development of the international patent environment towards a more efficient, low-cost and user-friendly direction.