I have previously written about the PPH MOTTAINAI agreement, which aims at easing the requirements for requesting patent examinations. The latest news is that the EPO (European Patent Office) entered the PPH MOTTAINAI agreement at the beginning of the year (29 January) and thus the PPH MOTTAINAI agreement has now been signed by a total of nine countries.
With the PPH MOTTAINAI program, two previously strict requirements have been removed: Firstly, the original priority application, from which a patent family stems, may now originate from any country. Secondly, within one patent family, it is now possible to use a decision to grant originating from any of the participating offices to request prosecution under the PPH at any other of the participating offices, provided a mutual PPH-agreement actually exists and remaining requirements are met.
The Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines entering the PPH-network
Furthermore, a number of new PPH agreements with the JPO as one participant have been launched, namely with the Intellectual Property Offices of Taiwan, Portugal and the Philippines; the latter two relating both to the use of national and PCT work products for requesting accelerated prosecution under the PPH.
With these agreements, the PPH-system can be said to have reached a small landmark, as the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines is the 25th office to join the PPH-system.
Read more about the Patent Prosecution Highway.
Troels Peter Rørdam, European Patent Attorney