WIPO Offers Digital Priority Document Exchange For USPTO And JPO

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and Japan Patent Office (JPO), leaders in global intellectual property examinations, have enabled applicants to submit certain documents (such as patent priority documents) from one of the two patent offices to the other digitally (in the Primary Document Exchange, or PDX) for years. The PDX, however, has not been very transparent: it was not always easy to verify whether the JPO actually received the priority document.

However, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has as of October 1, 2017 begun handling the priority document exchanges for such cases with its Digital Access Service (DAS). The DAS Applicant Portal enables agents for American applicants to Japan to verify online the submission status of the document(s) they wish to file, making the process more transparent.