PPH experiment to go international

The UK IPO has issued a press release, "Patent Prosecution Highway to be extended to cover International Applications", which says, in relevant part:
"Following a successful initial launch period, the scope of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot agreements between the UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO), the US Patent and Trade Mark Office (USPTO) and the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) are to be extended.

The extended procedure is now in force for the PPH with the USPTO, whilst the extended procedure relating to the PPH with the JPO will come in to force on 25 March 2008.

The Patent Prosecution Highway allows patent applicants who have received an examination report from one of the relevant national intellectual property offices to request accelerated examination of a corresponding patent application filed in another relevant country.

To date, the PPH pilot at the UK-IPO has only considered requests for accelerated examination relating to applications that were initially filed and examined at either the JPO or the USPTO. However, the pilot scheme is now being extended to cover examination reports issued by the JPO and USPTO which arise from an international application.

Under the new procedure, once the international application has been examined at either the JPO or the USPTO the applicant will be able to request accelerated examination at the UK-IPO. The agreement also allows accelerated examination at the JPO and the USPTO when the UK-IPO conducts an examination of an international application before it is examined at the JPO or USPTO".
The IPKat presumes that the PPH pilot scheme is being extended either because (i) it has initially worked well or (ii) because it is politically or strategically expedient to do so. The Press Release suggests the former, but neither it nor the accompanying Notes for Editors has given any clue as to how heavily it has been used [Merpel adds, I haven't even heard people talking about it ...]. Can anyone enlighten us?
PPH experiment to go international PPH experiment to go international Reviewed by Jeremy on Tuesday, March 11, 2008 Rating: 5

2 comments:

  1. I suspect that there are no figures about how heavily the PPH is used because hardly any applicants actually use it. I further suspect that this will be the case because there are very few circumstances where an applicant will want to have their applications in the UK and elsewhere granted quickly enough to justify using the service. In reality, the PPH is much more (if not all) about benefits for the patent offices themselves rather than for applicants, because offices can share the efforts of search and examination. This will be particularly important for the UK-IPO, which loses money on search and examination (getting it back with renewal fees). This is not a bad thing, it's just that it has been marketed as being a service aimed at applicants, which it isn't really.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am not sure of the reason for the increasing internationalisation of the roll out but I can confirm that IP Australia has agreed to participate in the PPH pilot with the USPTO for an initial 12 month period. It was stated that the aim of the participation in the pilot is to

    1. Strengthen institutional ties and work sharing/recognition with the USPTO;

    2. Provide IP Australia with an opportunity to influence the development of the PPH in line withy IP Australia's strategic direction and the Ideal Patent system (whatever that means !);

    3. Test applicant demand and usefulness for the PPH and

    4. Quantify the quality and efficiency gains to be expected.

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Powered by Blogger.