The so-called Trilateral Offices, or Trilateral Patent Offices, are a group of patent offices consisting of the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). 89 % of the patents in force in the world are either European patents (or part of European patent in a contracting state), Japanese patents or US patents [1]. A patent office is a governmental or intergovernmental organisation which controls the issue of patents. ... The European Patent Organisation (EPO or EPOrg in order to distinguish it from the European Patent Office, which is the main organ of the organisation) is an international organisation set up by the European Patent Convention. ... The United States Patent and Trademark Office (PTO or USPTO) is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that provides patent and trademark protection to inventors and businesses for their inventions and corporate and product identification. ...
A patent family is all of the patents and patent applications resulting from a specific patent application. ... The Patent Cooperation Treaty (or PCT) provides a unified procedure for filing patent applications to protect inventions worldwide. ...
The latest reports to the Trilateral Commission stem from papers delivered at the 2006 plenary meeting in Tokyo: Engaging with Russia: The Next Phase by Roderic Lyne, Strobe Talbott, and Koji Watanabe and Nuclear Proliferation: Risk and Responsibility by Graham Allison, Hervé de Carmoy, Thérèse Delpech, and Chung Min Lee.
Two other recent reports to the Trilateral Commission are The "Democracy Deficit" in the Global Economy: Enhancing the Legitimacy and Accountability of Global Institutions by Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and others, and Addressing the New International Terrorism: Prevention, Intervention and Multilateral Cooperation, by Joseph S Nye, Jr., Yukio Satoh and Paul Wilkinson.
A Trilateral Commission Task Force project typically involves a team of authors from our three regions working together for a year or so on a report which is discussed in draft form in the annual meeting and then published.
At their annual trilateral conference the three Offices signed a Memorandum of Understanding which aims at increasing the efficiency of the patenting process and better exploiting the work performed by each office using common technical tools and harmonised procedures.
The meeting, which was attended by some 150 participants, focused on the role of the trilateraloffices in the future patent system.
The trilateral cooperation between the EPO, the USPTO and the JPO, which started in 1983, is a pillar of the world wide patent system.
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