On April 11-12, 2017, the seventeenth Deputy Heads Meeting of IP5 Offices was held in Munich, Germany. Mr. Raymond Lutz, Deputy Director of the European Patent Office hosted the Meeting, Mr. Zhimin HE, Deputy Director of the Chinese State Intellectual Property Office, Mr. Koyanagi, Deputy Director of the Japan Patent Office, Mr.  Lee Joonseok, Deputy Director of the South Korean Patent Office and Mr. Mark Powell, Deputy Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office each led a delegation to attend the meeting. Mr. John Sandage, Deputy Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), attended the meeting as an observer.

It is known that the Deputy Director meeting of IP5 is a high-level meeting in the IP5 cooperation. This meeting was held by the European Patent Office. During the meeting, the Deputy Directors of IP5 offices listened to the work progress and results of the working groups in the past year, discussed about the global cases, the examination business rules and quality management, PCT cooperative retrieval and examination, and multiple topics referred by the Group of patent coordination experts, and adopted some of the results for reporting to the Director meeting of IP5 offices. In addition, this year is the 10th anniversary of the IP5 cooperation, the parties also discussed topics relating to the participation of industries, the project reorganization of the IP5 Offices, cooperation vision of the IP5 offices and the like, and deliberated the proposed joint statement to be signed in the Director meeting of IP5 offices this year.

Before the meeting, Mr. Xhiming HE and his party held bilateral talks with Mr. Raymond Lutz, Deputy Director of the European Patent Office, summarized the progress of bilateral cooperation projects and discussed the next arrangements for cooperation projects such as patent information data, and multiple agreements were reached. During the meeting, the members of the group also attended the meeting of the Group of patent coordination experts of IP5 offices, the meeting of the project management group of IP5 offices, the group meeting of PCT collaborative search and examination pilot and other related activities.