It has been announced that on June 1, 2018, the Netherlands Patent Office will join the DAS system. This is of course welcome news, and this will bring the number of DAS participating Offices to 18.
Among the IP5, conspicuously absent from DAS is the European Patent Office. EPO has promised that it will join DAS by late 2018.
Among the ID5, conspicuously absent from DAS is the European Union Intellectual Property Office. It is hoped that EUIPO will join DAS soon.
With regard to the USPTO, the PDX system provides some of the same functions as DAS. If between some pair of Offices (for example US and CN or US and KR) there is both a PDX relationship and a DAS relationship, the PDX relationship trumps. As between DAS and PDX, DAS is to be preferred. It permits more effective troubleshooting by the practitioner and it is more secure. Thus it is hoped that USPTO will soon pull the plug on its PDX relationships with CN and KR, thus permitting DAS to be employed instead.
It is hoped that more and more Offices will participate in DAS with respect to design applications. USPTO has indicated that it will commence participation in DAS as a depositing Office for designs Real Soon Now.