source:CNIPA
Updated: Mar 08,2021
In the face of international cooperation and competition regarding the comprehensive approach to IPR protection, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) has long developed its goal to better serve the reform and opening-up. Internally, it has been exploring the actual needs of domestic innovation subjects whereas externally it has been strengthening overseas cooperation and exchanges as well as dissemination and application of IP results. CNIPA carried out a series of international work-sharing programs on patent prosecution, effectively speeding up the process of overseas patent application and prosecution for domestic innovation subjects and helping the innovation subjects going global. What achievements did the programs make? What are their practical advantages?
Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH)
Achievements
Up to the end of 2020, CNIPA had signed PPH cooperation agreements with 30 patent prosecution institutions, including leaders in overseas markets such as the US, Europe, Japan and South Korea, Russia and Brazil, which are members of BRICS, as well as 16 partners along the Belt and Road Initiative. Thanks to such efforts, a network of patent prosecution highways has taken shape.
Advantages
The PPH program is currently the most active international cooperation program on patent prosecution, having the largest coverage. It allows Chinese enterprises to apply for and obtain patents at international patent prosecution institutions at a faster rate, with lower costs and with a higher rate of authorization.
PPH is a mechanism where a patent application under a first ruling from a first country can undergo accelerated examination in a second country which signed the PPH agreement. Since CNIPA began the bilateral PPH pilot for the first time with Japan Patent Office in 2011, the number of PPH partners and applications have increased rapidly. By the end of June 2020, PPH requests made by Chinese applicants
