The “Five Big Offices”  (五大局) met in Tianjin, China, on May 27, 2025.  The Five Big Offices are known in English as the IP-5, consisting of the five largest patent offices in the world (China, US, EPO, Japan, Korea).  Midterm meetings for sister organizations, the ID-5 (industrial design) and the TM-5 (trademarks), were held in La Jolla, California, about 10 days earlier.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

What is the significance of the USPTO not attending the IP-5? The Chinese press doesn’t explicitly mention that the US did not attend, nor do they point out the US absence in photographs taken at the meeting.   Rather, the Chinese political response publicly ignores the absence of the US at the Tianjin meeting, raising a Zen koan-type question: if the US declined to attend an important political meeting and no one commented on it, did the US not attend the meeting?

My hope is that the non-attendance by the US was not intended to send a signal to China or other IP-5 members.  These organizations serve an important purpose in facilitating technical exchanges, including by directly engaging industry in the discussions.  In fact, the US proposed the five-office idea when Jon Dudas was Director.  I placed the original call to help set up the new organization at Jon’s instruction.  When I was in the Embassy, I remonstrated that the Chinese media, ironically, had also declined to point out the US role in creating the IP-5, but instead inferred that the idea originated with the EPO.

Beyond False Dichotomies

I believe that we should have a principled approach towards engaging with China.  This approach should not embrace collaboration or confrontation as a binary choice.  As I noted: “Bilateral engagement is only one tool, and it need not be sacrificed to more assertive strategies.”   We should not decline to cooperate when it serves our interests, nor should we be shy about asking China to address our concerns.  

Some Practical Tasks Ahead

The IP-5 and its sister entities are important components of this approach.  For example, the IP-5 may wish to consider issues such as misuse of patent prosecution highways, which has been a recent focus of the media and testimony.  Another example would be addressing bad-faith cross-border trademark applications, which I discussed in a law review article in 2023.   In fact, bad faith TM filings had been discussed by the TM-5 at least as early as 2021and there have been some initial collaborative steps taken to address this problem in both countries.  As Congress and others increasingly focus on linkages between IP and national security, such collaborative engagements have also become even more important.