Effective Dec. 1, the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Digital Access Service (DAS) will
manage electronic retrievals of priority documents between the USPTO
and the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), in accordance with
the WIPO DAS agreement established
on April 20, 2009.
Some important details:
- There is no fee for this service.
- Participation for a particular application is voluntary.
- The certified copy requirement is considered satisfied when a priority document is retrieved electronically via the WIPO DAS service, during pendency of the U.S. application.
- The KIPO deposits via the WIPO DAS service certain patent, utility model, and industrial design applications.
- For applications filed on or after Dec. 1, the applicant must provide the WIPO DAS access code associated with the priority application that is to be retrieved via the WIPO DAS service, in addition to the priority claim. The priority claim includes the country code (KR for Korea), application number, and filing date.
- The WIPO DAS access code increases security as a third validation point for each application along with the application number and filing date.