Patent Prosecution Highway III – Geographical overview

The concept of PPH was originally proposed by the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) as a bilateral agreement between the patent offices of two countries on using each other’s search and examination results in treating analogous patent applications, thereby allowing applicants in both offices to obtain analogous patents faster and more efficiently.

The first PPH was established in July 2006 as a pilot project between the JPO and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and was made permanent in January 2008. Since then numerous other PPH’s have been established between different patent offices, most being at the time of writing on a pilot project level. For instance the JPO has since then made PPH agreements with the national patent offices of such countries as Denmark, United Kingdom, Germany and South Korea. Also the USPTO and the European Patent Office have made a PPH agreement.

In 2007 the KIPO of South Korea and the UK-IPO of United Kingdom joined the group of PPH countries, and USPTO, JPO, KIPO and UK-IPO now all have mutual PPH agreements.

The number of countries having PPH agreements accelerated in 2008 seeing the national patent offices of Denmark, Germany, Canada and Australia, as well as the European Patent Office, joining the PPH family.

The newest members of the PPH family are the national patent offices of Russia, Finland, Austria, Singapore and Hungary who all joined in 2009. It is also planned in 2010 that PCT applications will be able to benefit from the PPH co-operation between the world’s three biggest IP authorities: the EPO, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the JPO.

More PPH agreements are in the melting pot, and most likely new countries will join the PPH family in the future. Particularly, it is worth mentioning that the Danish Patent and Trademark Office is working actively to obtain further PPH agreements.

A complete overview of existing and considered PPH agreements at the time of writing can be seen on the graphic below, courtesy of the web page of the Japanese Patent Office.

Troels Peter Rørdam
Associate Patent Attorney

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