As of Monday the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO), the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have made their industrial design data available to Designview tool, a searchable database for IP users set up by the EU's IP office OHIM (Office for the Harmonization in the Internal Market).

The integration of Chinese data through SIPO is a concrete result of EU-China cooperation in the field of Intellectual Property, the 10th?anniversary of which is being celebrated this year. It was achieved thanks to bilateral cooperation between SIPO and OHIM, and the support of the IP key action managed by OHIM.

With SIPO, CIPO and USPTO on-board, there are now 35 participating IP offices in Designview. With the addition of more than 3.3 million designs from SIPO, Designview now provides information and access to more than 8.6 million?industrial designs for IP professionals, companies and other users worldwide.

Since the introduction of Designview on Nov 19, 2012, about 1.2 million searches from 137 different countries have been carried out using the tool. Now Chinese rights owners and other users can access this service in a Chinese language version.

chenyingqun@chinadaily.com.cn