Background

This project was initiated during the WIPO Symposium for IP Authorities in September 2009. The starting point for the project is a request from the IP Offices of Australia, Canada and UK (The Vancouver Group offices) for WIPO to provide a platform for the sharing of search and examination documents in order to facilitate work sharing between the offices. Note that the Vancouver Group offices intend to operate a work sharing programme, not a mutual recognition system.A new platform is required because no common platform exists that would meet the requirements. In particular, patent search facilities would be required, supported by a database of patent bibliographic data. The system must also be secure and, eventually, support features such as collaborative examination, workflow, etc.The platform will not be unique to the Vancouver Group. It will be extensible to other work-sharing programs, in particular:

New offices that may join the Vancouver Group
New groups of offices with similar work-sharing agreements between them (Latin American offices, ASEAN, etc)
Collaborative examination in the PCT international and national phases (see the PCT Roadmap)
The revised WIPO ICE service (International Cooperation for Examination) under which offices with capacity and experience provide assistance to smaller and less-experienced offices. The project and system will be known as WIPO CASE (Centralized Access to Search and Examination).WIPO-CASE (version 1.0) was first released into production in March 2010 has very basic functions:
Bulk upload of documents and bibliographic data
Access to search and examination reports through simple search by application or publication number, optionally including additional types of documents uploaded by participating Offices

Project Status

The next release CASE 2.0 is planned for 2012 with additional functionality:

Patent family search and dashboard view of application status
Direct access to documents held in the digital libraries of participating Offices
Office group
Notificaion service
Office Data Upload portal for small Offices without the need to automate such process

All project related documentation are available here.

Data coverage (last update on February 29, 2012)

The following statistics are collected as of February 29, 2012 and cover approximately applications filed since 2000.

Office	No. of Applications	SPEC(Specifications)	CSEX(Claims Searched or Examined)	SRST(Search Statement)	EXRP(Examination report)	SIST(Search Information Statement)	A15R(Article 15(5) search report)	SRSG(Search Strategy)
GB	42670	64768	15543	2239	30594	0	0	0
CA	180895	20	0	0	0	0	0	0
AU	322514	153614	0	0	174117	105070	20	0

Total	546079	218402	15543	2239	204711	105070	20	0

System Usage (last update on August 20, 2012)

Registered users per Office

Office	No of Users
GB	11
CA	465
AU	12
Total	488

Document usage from March 3, 2011 to February 29, 2012

Depositing Office	No of Accessed Documents	Accessing Office
AU	2588	AU (162)
		CA (2262)
		GB (164)
CA	47	AU (17)
		CA (17)
		GB (13)
GB	3430	AU (2714)
		CA (514)
		GB (202)
Total	6065

Suggested timelines for CASE 2.0 implementation

Scope of Release	Acceptance Testing Start Date	Production Start Date
New portal including only patent family search and group document security	24 October 2011	N/A
Web services prototype for evaluation	2 November 2011	N/A
+ integrated with WIPO account, notification services, statistic reports)	6 January 2012	TBD (30 March 2012?)
Full version including web services to perform patent family search (centralized or decentralized), to access digital libraries held in Office(s) such as retrieving bibliographic data, citations, legal status, and examination and search reports.	30 March 2012	TBD (29 June 2012?)