The fourteenth meeting of the Regular Working Group on Information Technologies of the EAPO Administrative Council (PWGI) was held on November 30, 2023. One of the important results of the meeting was the decision to launch in full an electronic exchange of general workflow documents.

The project is based on the Procedure for Electronic Exchange of General Workflow Documents between the EAPO and the national patent offices of the EAPO Member States, approved by the EAPO Administrative Council in May this year.

The EAPO and national patent offices have been successfully exchanging electronic documents on Eurasian applications and patents for several years via the EAPO-Online system. A new electronic exchange channel is introduced for documents not linked directly to the patent procedure (general workflow documents).

According to the decision of the EAPO Administrative Council, the pilot project was implemented in the national patent office of Tajikistan. The representative of the National Center for Patents and Information delivered a speech at the PWGI meeting and confirmed the successful implementation of the pilot project. The participants decided to convert the pilot project into an industrial one and to provide an opportunity to work in the EAPO system for all national offices in the region.

During the meeting, the EAPO informed the participants about the development of the EAPO Integrated Information System and the results of the recently completed research work aimed at studying various aspects of the formation of the common Eurasian examination and information space in the industrial property field.

The participants of the meeting also discussed the enhancement of the PWGI’s performance and the updating of data in the EAPO Pharmaceutical Registry.