Patent applicants from five big economic regions are expected to enjoy swift and more efficient patent application processing.
The world's five largest Intellectual Property Offices (IP5) - the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO), the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the State Intellectual Property Office of the People's Republic of China (SIPO) – have agreed to launch Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot program as of January 2014.
The program is supposed to streamline the examination procedures of patent application by using the work-sharing of the IP5 offices, including PCT and other national work results. Under this framework and some other conditions, the applicants whose applications have been found to be patentable by any of the IP5 offices may ask for acceleration of their corresponding applications pending in the other four offices. The PPH requests to any of the IP5 should be filed on the basis of IP5 PCT and the national work results, which means that the examination results done by IP 5 will be utilized.
Details of requirements for participation in the IP5 PPH pilot program will be announced on the website: www.sipo.gov.cn/ztzl/ywzt/pph/.
