The Chilean National Institute of Industrial Property (INAPI) has recently made available patent search and examination documentation performed by INAPI´s patent examiners to the WIPO CASE system hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). WIPO CASE is a platform that enables participating patent offices to securely share patent search and examination reports.
WIPO CASE is aimed to improve the quality and efficiency of the patent search and examination process done at local and regional patent offices by sharing existing information of any equivalent filing at another participating patent office.
The following are the intellectual property offices that participate directly in WIPO CASE: Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, Chile, China, the Eurasian Patent Office (EAPO), the European Patent Office (EPO), India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Singapore, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam.
There are two different levels of participation in WIPO CASE:
- Accessing Office – Examiners at the accessing office can use the WIPO CASE web portal and can search for patent applications at other participating offices and retrieve the documents that are made available by those offices.
- Providing Office – The providing office makes available the search and examination documentation for patent applications filed at that office.
Since January 2016, INAPI is officially an accessing office of WIPO CASE. However, after the recent uploading of documentation regarding patent searches and examinations carried out by INAPI, it is now in a position to become a providing office.
Chile is the first Latin American country to join this international patent information sharing platform.
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