Effective 30 July 2013, the part of the PPH-agreement between The Danish Patent- and Trademark Office (DKPTO) and The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) applicaple for applicants using the DKPTO as the Office of First Filing, i.e. typically Danish applicants, has been changed by the CIPO to have the same requirements as a PPH MOTTAINAI agreement. The PPH MOTTAINAI has been described previously by the Awapatent IP Blog in more detail – see here.
Thus, within one patent family, irrespective of the origin of the priority application(s), it is now possible to use a positive examination result originating from any of the offices with which the CIPO has a PPH agreement to request prosecution under the PPH at the CIPO.
Simultaneously, the part of the agreement applicaple for applicants using the CIPO as the Office of First Filing, i.e. typically Canadian applicants, has been upgraded to a so-called “PPH-agrement version 2.0”.
The PPH-agrement version 2.0, which the Awapatent IP Blog has described previously in more detail here, introduces the significant simplification that it no longer matters which office is the Office of First Filing and Office of Second Filing, respectively.
Hence, it is now also possible to use the examination result of the Office of Second Filing to request examination under the PPH at the Office of First Filing.
Troels Peter Rørdam, European Patent Attorney & Certified Danish Patent Agent
Link to the DKPTO-CIPO PPH-agreement version 2.0:
At DKPTO: http://internationalcooperation.dkpto.org/patent-prosecution-highways/pph-between-denmark-and-canada.aspx
At CIPO: http://www.cipo.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/h_wr02163.html