There is welcome news that on October 1, 2018, USPTO joined DAS as a Depositing Office for purposes of designs.
This is welcome progress with respect to the ID5 (the five highest volume industrial design Offices). When people say “ID5”, they mean:
- CNIPA (the Chinese intellectual property office, formerly known as SIPO)
- EUIPO (formerly known as OHIM)
- JPO (the Japanese patent office)
- KIPO (the Korean intellectual property office)
- USPTO
At this point, so far as the members of the ID5 are concerned, the progress is as follows:
- CNIPA is a Depositing Office and Accessing Office for patents and utility models and designs
- EUIPO unfortunately does not yet belong to DAS. It is hoped that EUIPO will join DAS Real Soon Now.
- JPO is a Depositing Office with respect to patents and utility models. JPO is an Accessing Office with respect to patents, utility models, and designs.
- KIPO is a Depositing Office with respect to patents and utility models and designs (but see note below).
- USPTO is a Depositing Office and Accessing Office for patents and designs (but see note below).
The note is that USPTO and KIPO have a legacy relationship in the PDX system. And unfortunately the design of PDX is that it trumps DAS. If two Offices have a PDX relationship, this blocks any DAS relationship. So what needs to happen now is that USPTO needs to pull the plug on its PDX relationship with KIPO. I blogged about this here.
And of course JPO needs to become a Depositing Office for designs.
And EUIPO needs to become a member of DAS.