The Japan Patent Office (JPO), the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) and the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) are working on a cooperative project to compile concordance lists that indicate the corresponding relationships among the respective, similar group codes used for trademark examination at the JPO, the CNIPA and the KIPO, based on a trilateral agreement the three offices signed.

Similar group codes are the codes assigned to goods and services that are presumed to be similar to each other in trademark examination. The project aims to improve the predictability of examination results, by encouraging users who file trademark applications with the JPO, the CNIPA or the KIPO to utilize the concordance lists when searching for the existence of already registered trademarks.

As a result of the JPO-CNIPA-KIPO cooperation, the JPO is pleased to publish the Japan-China-Korea Concordance List of Similar Group Codes corresponding to Nice Classification, 11th edition, Version 2021 (NCL(11-2021)), which came into effect on January 1, 2021.

The JPO-CNIPA-KIPO will also proceed with this project in the future.

From: JPO Website           

Date: 12 March 2021