Why might I be interested in participating in the CNIPA-EPO pilot?

If you are a national or resident of P.R. China, selecting the EPO as your ISA may be especially interesting for you if you are looking to protect your invention in Europe and will therefore need to enter the European phase under the PCT later on in order to obtain a European patent granted by the EPO. A European patent can be validated not only in all of the EPO's 39 member states but also in six other states (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Georgia, Republic of Moldova, Morocco and Tunisia).

If you choose the EPO as your ISA, the international search report it issues will provide you with a sound basis for taking an informed decision on whether or not to enter the European phase and subsequent national phases, and save you time and money if you do. Since the EPO performs international searches as ISA to exactly the same high-quality standard as a European search, applications already searched by the EPO during the international phase do not have to undergo a supplementary European search upon entry into the European phase. In practice, this means that, by choosing the EPO as ISA, you can accelerate the patent grant proceedings by up to 12 months (and even more in the case of early entry into the European phase) and benefit financially because there is no need to pay any supplementary European search fee.

Having an international search report established by the EPO as ISA also means you will have the option of making a demand for international preliminary examination if needed to overcome objections raised in the first written opinion. This optional procedure includes a top-up search prior to examination to check for any intermediate prior art that might have become available since the international search report was established, an opportunity to talk to the examiner in a telephone consultation and the possibility of obtaining a second written opinion if you file amendments to your claims. Furthermore, if the EPO as IPEA has established an international preliminary examination report, and you decide to enter the European phase on that basis, the European examination fee payable in that phase will be reduced by 75%, which amounts to a considerable saving on top of the saving already made on a European supplementary search.