TM5 (Trademark 5) is the name given to a forum of the world’s five largest trademark offices. Its mission is to promote cooperation and collaboration among its members. The members, or “Partners,” of TM5 exchange information on practices and programs that facilitate increasingly user-friendly and, if possible, interoperable trademark systems. Projects undertaken by TM5 — such as the TM5 ID List and Common Status Descriptors — aim at harmonization and improvement of trademark procedures. Other projects, such as Combatting Bad Faith Trademark Filings and Describing Goods and Services projects, aim to compare the practices of the Partner offices.
The five members of the TM5 are:
• the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA),
• the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO),
• the Japan Patent Office (JPO),
• the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), and
• the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Together, the TM5 offices account for about half of all trademark applications filed worldwide. TM5 is an outgrowth of the Trademark Trilateral, a cooperative framework that JPO, EUIPO, and the USPTO first undertook in 2001. That framework was expanded to include KIPO and CNIPA in 2011 and 2012, respectively, and the group then became known as TM5.