JPO is now a Depositing Office for designs

(Update:  We have a winner!  A trendy, modern and up-to-date Japanese design practitioner has won the prize.  Read the update blog article here.)

Design practitioners rely on the DAS system for the interchange of electronic certified copies of priority applications.  Such a system becomes more and more useful as more and more Offices participate.

Today is a big day.  Today, the Japanese Patent Office became a Depositing Office in the DAS system for industrial designs.

It is helpful, then, to remind ourselves of the progress in this area.  A helpful benchmark is to see the progress with the ID5, that is, the five Offices that represent the most design filings.  Those five Offices are:

• CNIPA (China)
• EUIPO (Europe)
• JPO (Japan)
• KIPO (Korea)
• USPTO (US)

Before today, the participation of these five Offices was:

• CNIPA (China) – both a Depositing Office and an Accessing Office
• EUIPO (Europe) – no participation
• JPO (Japan) – only an Accessing Office
• KIPO (Korea) – both a Depositing Office and an Accessing Office
• USPTO (US) – both a Depositing Office and an Accessing Office

As of today, the welcome development is:

• CNIPA (China) – both a Depositing Office and an Accessing Office
• EUIPO (Europe) – no participation
• JPO (Japan) – both a Depositing Office and an Accessing Office!
• KIPO (Korea) – both a Depositing Office and an Accessing Office
• USPTO (US) – both a Depositing Office and an Accessing Office

Conspicuous by its absence on this participation list is EUIPO.  It will certainly be very well received in the design community when EUIPO commences participation in the DAS system.  I blogged about this on November 11, 2019.

Every Office that participates in DAS for designs is thus now symmetrical — it is both a Depositing Office and an Accessing Office.  Here is a complete list of participating Offices for designs:

• Australia
• Canada
• Chile
• China
• Georgia
• India
• Japan
• South Korea
• Spain
• US

One way that this will be very helpful is for a Hague filer who is claiming priority from a Japanese design application.  As I blogged here on February 28, 2018, there is a place in Form DM/1 where you can include a DAS access code with your priority claim.  This permits a Designated Office to retrieve an electronic certified copy of the priority application from DAS.  The US, for example, requires a certified copy as part of the perfection of the priority claim.  Thus a Hague filer that is designating the US and that is claiming priority from a Japanese application (or Australian, or Canadian, or Chilean, or Chinese, or Georgian, or Indian, or Korean, or Spanish application) can simply enter the relevant DAS access code into Form DM/1 and this will save the filer from the legacy practice of having to send a physical certified copy to the USPTO by courier.

Now here is an opportunity to win a prize. The first Japanese design practitioner to provide to me a DAS access code for a Japanese design application, that permits me to add the design application to my DAS workbench, and to post a Certificate of Availability on this blog, will win one of our nice digital multimeters.  This practitioner will of course also enjoy recognition as a very trendy, modern, and up-to-date design practitioner.