GT: You have proposed the idea of "Intellectual Property 5 (IP5)." What's the goal of IP5? Is it now an official association or still a proposal?

Wegner: The goal of IP5 is to create inter-governmental cooperation between patent-granting organization groups. The basic problem that IP5 addresses is that it's too expensive to get foreign patents for everyone. Isn't it silly to file a patent in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, German, English, and so many other languages when each patent examiner does the same job?

The goal of IP5 is also to see what aspects of patent examination can be harmonized. Can the application be done at any office of the IP5? Can we change some of our laws for harmonization? The long term goal for IP5 is to have a common patent grant for the major countries in the world. Ideally, it would be five offices sharing responsibilities.

Besides a physical office in major cities, say, Shanghai, Beijing or Washington DC, we would also have an electronic office. But this will take a long time to progress as it is still at a very early stage. Now we have 10 study groups for IP5. Out of the study groups, we can make some short-term resolutions on cooperation, and then we can implement these changes.

IP5 started at the meeting in 2007 in Hawaii, and several meetings later on. Last year we had one in China. Next year, there will be a meeting in Kyoto, Japan. So, at the moment it is still a very good time for academic communities to see how we can change things, and still possible to shape the direction of IP5.

GT: What can be done for IP rights protection through cooperation between different countries at the moment?

Wegner: We have the Patent Prosecution Highway for example, which is an early stage of patent work sharing. Patent Prosecution Highway basically means that I can file patent applications in several countries simultaneously.

If I get my patent granted in one of the offices, then the other patent offices will give an immediate examination to the same invention. Probably, other countries will follow the results of the first examination. So that's one example that can be done now. Also, there is the China-Joint Patent Prosecution Highway at the moment. But to be honest, this is more a prototype of the future, and it has very limited usage right now.