This past Saturday was a big day for DAS for US design filers and for US utility patent filers, in cases that claim priority from Chinese design and utility applications. The big development was USPTO “pulling the plug” on PDX with respect to the Chinese patent office (blog article on utility patents and blog article on design patents).
The previous “pulling the plug” for PDX was last November 2017 when USPTO pulled the plug on PDX for Japan (blog article).
Now there is more plug-pulling to do. Eventually PDX will be a thing of the past.
As of today, USPTO has PDX relationships with only two remaining Offices — the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO).
USPTO will not be able to pull the plug on PDX for EPO until after EPO joins DAS. EPO has not yet joined DAS. But EPO has promised it will join DAS Real Soon Now (blog article). Presumably after EPO joins DAS, then USPTO will pull the plug on PDX for EPO, just as USPTO has done for Japan and for China.
But right now, USPTO might as well pull the plug on PDX for KIPO. Just as USPTO has done for Japan and for China. As soon as USPTO pulls the plug on PDX for KIPO, this will open a door for US design filers to make use of DAS for applications that claim priority from Korean design applications. I hope that USPTO will do this very soon.
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