As summer, at least here in Denmark, finally heats up, so does the PPH thus giving both Danish and Swedish patent applicants new possibilities of speeding up and simplifying examination of their patent applications. In the following the AWA 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 6 July 2015, the German and Estonian IP offices join the Global PPH network, thus bringing the number of participants in the Global PPH up to 21. The Global PPH network already counts inter alia 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 German and Estonian IP offices. Also, the Estonian IP office is new in the PPH altogether.
Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that also the Egyptian and Romanian IP offices have entered the PPH-network, by signing an agreement with the Japanese patent office, JPO, and the US patent and trademark office, USPTO, respectively.
Thereby, Egypt has become the first African country to join the PPH family, while the total number of countries in the PPH family has reached 37.
Troels Peter Rørdam, European Patent Attorney & Certified Danish Patent Agent
