As the PPH expands further, both Danish, Swedish and indeed European patent applicants are offered new possibilities of speeding up and simplifying examination of their patent applications. In the following the Awapatent IP Blog sums up these new possibilities.
To recall, for a given PPH-agreement the PPH allows for requesting accelerated examination at the one office participating in this agreement based on the search results and a set of claims accepted for grant in an analogous application at the other participating office. For the Global PPH this principle applies for any combination of two participating offices.
Effective 1 November 2014, the Austrian and Singaporean IP offices have joined the Global PPH network, thus bringing the number of participants in the Global PPH up to 19. The Global PPH network already counts i.a. the IP offices of Sweden and Denmark as well as the Nordic Patent Institute as members. Hence, the IP offices of Sweden and Denmark as well as the Nordic Patent Institute now all have PPH agreements with the Austrian and Singaporean IP offices.
Furthermore, the EPO has recently announced the upcoming launch of three new PPH agreements, namely with the IP offices of Canada, Mexico and Singapore. The three new PPH agreements are to enter into force in January 2015. It remains yet to be seen whether they will apply also to PCT work products. The press release of the EPO may be found here.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that also the Thai and Malaysian IP offices have entered the PPH-network, both by signing an agreement with the Japanese patent office, JPO.
The complete overview of existing and working PPH agreements at the time of writing can be seen on the graphic below, courtesy of the PPH web-page compiled by the Japanese Patent Office, JPO:
Troels Peter Rørdam, European Patent Attorney & Certified Danish Patent Agent
