[December 07, 2013]

KIPO: TM5 Annual Meeting to be Held in Seoul Next Week

The Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) announced that it would hold the 2013 TM5 Annual Meeting, a gathering of five leading offices in the field of trademark and design, in Seoul on 5 and 6 December.

The TM5 annual meeting strives to promote cooperation between KIPO, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) of Europe, the Japan Patent Office (JPO), and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC (News - Alert)) of China, contributing to increasingly user-friendly trademark systems.

Together these five offices account for around 70% of all global trademark and design applications. The meeting originally started among the United States, Europe, and Japan as the TM3 in 2001. Korea joined in 2011, with China following in 2012 to form the TM5.

* There were 2,686,355 trademark applications to the TM5 offices in 2011, representing 64.3% of the global total. For design applications, of which there were 700,858 applications to the TM5 offices, this rises to 90.4% of the global total.

The 2013 meeting involves around ffty participants, including the President of OHIM, officials from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and user group representatives. Participants will fully discuss the future direction of the TM5 and the progress of the nine cooperation projects within the group, including TMView and TMClass for batch searches on trademarks and the acceptable identification of goods and services by the partners, joint research on figurative trademark search, and making identification lists of goods and services accepted in all five offices.

* TMView: website to search the trademark applications and registrations in each office

* TMClass: website to search the lists of goods and services accepted by each office

KIPO, as the host in 2013, is coming up with TM5 long-term development initiative along with new project proposal called Common Examination Project. The purpose of the new project is to compare and analyze examination results for the same trademarks in the TM5 offices for a better understanding of the differences in trademark laws, examination standards and practices. The project is consequently expected to help applicants better predict examination results when filing overseas.

KIPO has also designated the first week of December, when the TM5 annual meeting is held, as Korea Trademark and Design Week to attract wide publicity to the importance of trademarks and designs. During the week, events are planned on the international trends and issues in trademark and design with renowned experts from at home and abroad attending.

On 3 December, the Korea Trademark and Design Association (KOTA) and the International Trademark Association (INTA) host the Seoul International Trademark-Design Conference on the theme of "Value of Brand and Design in the Creative Economy." On December 4, KIPO and WIPO host the KIPO-WIPO International Symposium to celebrate the 10th year of KIPO joining the Madrid Protocol and its prospective accession to the Hague Agreement in 2014.

"We will be committed to reaching an agreement on cooperative measures among the five partners in order to provide practical help to applicants," said KIPO Commissioner Kim Young-min.

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